He favoured his audience with a sketch of the services which he had rendered to Squire Bull, showing that in everything he had done, he had the honour of Bullockshatch at heart; and by cantering over some portions of his story where the ground was rather dubious, sliding over others, and making a prodigious prancing where his footing was tolerably firm, he managed to persuade the majority of the servants that he really was a well-meaning individual, and that they were bound at all events to overlook this last escapade about Otho, which no one who had an atom of conscience could pretend absolutely to justify. Protocol was in high feather in consequence of this whitewashing; the more so, that at one time it appeared very doubtful if even the under servants could be induced to support him. He and some of his chums had a dinner and drink afterwards at a servants' club to which they belonged, where Proto. made another speech, boasting that so long as he lived, no man born on Squire Bull's estate should be insulted by any neighbouring proprietor, or be laid in the stocks, or be hustled in a village, without receiving ample damages. All this sounded very well, though it certainly looked like holding out a premium to poaching; but it so happened, that a short time afterwards an old gentleman of the name of Marshall, who was in Don Ferdinando's service, and who had been mainly instrumental in reinstating him in his house, after it was broken into by the rabble as I have already told you, came over to Bullockshatch on a holiday jaunt. Marshall's policy through life had always been to return a buffet for a blow; and, as the fellows who created the uproar on Ferdinando's estate were no more to be reasoned with than so many wild Indians, whom indeed they resembled in their devilish practices of stabbing, tomahawking, ravishing, and roasting alive, he was by no means scrupulous in his method of putting them down. Some of the insurgents, who had fled to Bullockshatch, had succeeded, by dint of unmitigated lying, in getting up a strong feeling among the villagers against Marshall, whom they represented as a man-eating tiger, with so debauched a digestion, that he could not sleep at night unless he had previously supped upon a child. The people of Bullockshatch were exceedingly credulous upon such points, for it is on record that about a hundred years before, when poor Donald, as kindly a creature as ever fasted on oatmeal, came down from the hills, the children were sent into the coal-cellar, lest haply the sight of a plump one might whet his uncivilised appetite. Be that as it may, a general impression had gone abroad that Marshall was no better than a cannibal; and during the short while he remained in Bullockshatch, not a nursery-maid was allowed to take the usual airing in the streets.