"Well?" cried the Squire, suspending the operation of stropping his razor. Mr Stirn groaned. "Well, man, what now?" "I never knowed such a thing in this here parish afore," began Mr Stirn, "and I can only 'count for it by s'posing that them foreign Papishers have been semminating"-- "Been what?" "Semminating"-- "Disseminating, you blockhead--disseminating what?" "Damn the stocks," began Mr Stirn, plunging right _in medias res_, and by a fine use of one of the noblest figures in rhetoric. "Mr Stirn!" cried the Squire, reddening, "did you say 'Damn the stocks?'--damn my new handsome pair of stocks!" "Lord forbid, sir; that's what _they_ say: that's what they have digged on it with knives and daggers, and they have stuffed mud in its four holes, and broken the capital of the elewation." The Squire took the napkin off his shoulder, laid down strop and razor; he seated himself in his arm-chair majestically, crossed his legs, and in a voice that affected tranquillity, said-- "Compose yourself, Stirn; you have a deposition to make, touching an assault upon--can I trust my senses?--upon my new stocks. Compose yourself--be calm. NOW! What the devil is come to the parish?" "Ah, sir, what indeed?" replied Mr Stirn; and then, laying the forefinger of the right hand on the palm of the left, he narrated the case. "And whom do you suspect? Be calm now, don't speak in a passion. You are a witness, sir--a dispassionate, unprejudiced witness. Zounds and fury! this is the most insolent, unprovoked, diabolical--but whom do you suspect, I say?" Stirn twirled his hat, elevated his eyebrows, jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and whispered--"I hear as how the two Papishers slept at your honour's last night." "What, dolt! do you suppose Dr Rickeybockey got out of his warm bed to bung up the holes in my new stocks?" "Noa; he's too cunning to do it himself, but he may have been semminating. He's mighty thick with Parson Dale, and your honour knows as how the Parson set his face again the stocks. Wait a bit, sir--don't fly at me yet. There be a boy in this here parish"-- "A boy!--ah, fool, now you are nearer the mark. The Parson write 'Damn the stocks,' indeed! What boy do you mean?" "And that boy be cockered up much by Mister Dale; and the Papisher went and sat with him and his mother a whole hour t'other day; and that boy is as deep as a well; and I seed him lurking about the place, and hiding hisself under the tree the day the stocks was put up--and that ere boy is Lenny Fairfield."