Protocol was in one of his worst humours when Mat-o'-the-Mint returned. Everything had gone wrong with him in the south. Don Vesuvius had settled his affairs, clean contrary to the wish of Protocol. Don Ferdinando had got all he wanted, simply by acting in a manner directly opposite to his advice. Signor Tureen, whom he favoured, had been worsted in a lawsuit which he recommended, and was saddled with enormous costs. Peter, with whom he was bent on currying favour, had been kicked out of his patrimony, and Protocol had not even the dubious credit of fetching him back, that having been accomplished by young Nap. Altogether he had made a precious mess of it; and many people, both in the upper and under-servants' hall at Bullockshatch, began to insinuate that, after all, Master Protocol was no better than a bungler. All this tended to exasperate him to the utmost. "It is a devilish hard thing," he remarked to himself one day, as he sat in the midst of his maps and correspondence--"It is a devilish hard thing that I can't find any men of talent to carry my designs into execution! There is scarcely a messenger in my whole department who can bamboozle a toll-keeper, much less throw dust in the eyes of a ground-steward. The Squire will no doubt make an hideous outcry about this unconscionable bill of expenses which Mat-o'-the-Mint has run up; and heaven only knows how far he may have compromised my credit. Catch me allowing him to go out again on any errand of the kind! Never, since I first nibbed a pen, were matters in such a mess! I really must do something for the sake of my own character. But then the puzzle is with whom to begin. I won't have anything more to do with Jonathan, that's flat. I dare not meddle further in anything which concerns Esquire North, for he is beginning to growl already, like a bear as he is, and Copenhagen is under his protection. It would be a dangerous game to have anything to say at present either to Colonel Martinet or Don Ferdinando; and, as for the South, why, I have been already checkmated there. Ha! an idea strikes me! Didn't I get several letters lately from a relation of Moses, complaining that he had suffered some damage in a street-row after dining with young Squire Otho? And, now I think of it, Squire Otho owes us some five or six pounds of interest on a bond which he granted to Bull, and he is behindhand with the arrears. And, as I live, here's another letter, which I threw aside at the time, telling me that Cheeks the marine, who is in John's pay, was taken up one night to the watch-house by a constable of Otho's, on a charge of being drunk and disorderly! Altogether, it is a capital case; and as those barges which I sent along the canal to frighten Don Vesuvius are still lying thereabouts, I'll even desire them to stop in front of Otho's house, and demand immediate satisfaction."