“Yes, sir, you may think nothing of it. But I have hunted a thing for three hundred leagues, and got at it through the biggest liars that ever stole a white manʼs galligaskins”. “Thank you, Dr. Hutton”, said Cradock, diverting the contest; “_λωποδύτης_ is the word you mean. And I fear it applies to me also”. “Perhaps, young man”, cried Rufus Hutton, “you know more Hindustani than I do. Translate——”, and he poured out a sentence which I dare not try to write down. “But, my good fellow, you forget it is we who are stealing yours”. “I think”, said Sir Cradock, slowly, and seriously displeased—Good Heavens! to joke about the succession to the Nowelhurst title and lands!—“I think, sir, this can hardly be looked upon as evidence. I always cut short the depositions, sir. As Chairman of the Quarter Sessions, I always cut short the depositions”. “And so you wish to cut short, sir, the deposition of your son”. Rufus laughed at his own bad joke, and expected the others to laugh with him. It made things worse than ever. Sir Cradock was afraid to speak, lest he might say anything unseemly to a visitor. The young man saw his opportunity, and took advantage of it. “Father, I beg you to let me go. You would not wish me, I am sure, to be here; only you think it my right to be. If you please, I will waive that right; I can wholly trust your decision”. He bowed to his father with cold respect, being hurt at his rapid conviction, to Rufus Hutton with some contempt and a smile at the situation. Then he marched down the long room placidly, and whistled when he was out of it. The next moment he bolted away to his bedroom, and wept there very heavily. “Glorious fellow”! cried Dr. Hutton. “But we donʼt at all appreciate him. Requires a man of mind to do that. And now for Mrs. OʼGaghan”! Leaving Sir Cradock this speech to digest, he arose and rang the bell sharply. He felt himself fully invested now with supreme judicial authority, and he longed to be at the Irishwoman, who had called him a “red gossoon”. CHAPTER XVII. Biddy OʼGaghan was hard at work, boiling down herbs and blessing them, drying and bottling cleverly, scraping, and picking the cloves out. She had turned the still–room of the house into her private laboratory; and she saved all the parish and half of the hundred from “them pisoners, as called theirselves doctors”. Now, she was one of those powerful women—common enough, by–the–by—who can work all the better for talking; and, between her sniffs at the saucepan–lids, and her tests upon the drying–pans, she had learned that something strange was up, and had made fifty guesses about it. Blowing the scum and the pearly beads from a pot of pellitory of the wall (one of her staunch panaceas), she received a command most peremptory to present herself in the justice–room.