“Zounds! I won’t believe it!--it’s impossible--it’s a forgery--it’s a lie--it’s an artifice of the devil! Why, it’s written in a clerk’s hand. ’Gad, if I thought there was a word of truth in it, I’d go to bed for a month!” burst out the General, as soon as he was safe in his own sanctuary, choking with passion, and tugging at the black stock and tight frock-coat as if to put his threat of retiring into immediate execution. It was one of his peculiarities, which we have omitted to mention, to adopt this method of avoiding the common annoyances and irritations of life. When anything went wrong in the household, the General made no more ado but incontinently proceeded to _strip and turn in_. When there was an _émeute_ below stairs, and Newton-Hollows was in a “state of siege”--a calamity which occurred about once in two years--the proprietor used to go to bed till the disturbance had completely blown over. When the news arrived of Mrs. Kettering’s death, her brother gave vent to his feelings between the sheets, although he was obliged to get up within a few hours and travel post-haste to join the afflicted family at St. Swithin’s; nay, it is related of him that, on one occasion, when an alarming fire happened to break out in a country-house where he was staying on a visit, nothing but the personal exertions of his friends, who hurried after him, and carried him off by force from his chamber, where he was rapidly undressing, prevented his being burnt alive in his nightcap. At the present crisis the General had already divested himself of coat, waistcoat, etc., ere the sight of a clean change of apparel, laid out ready for his afternoon wear, altered the current of his ideas, and he bethought him that it would be wiser to walk down to his club, amuse himself as usual in his habitual resorts, and thus drive this impertinent “attempt at extortion,” for so he did not hesitate to call it, entirely from his mind, than place himself at once _hors de combat_ amongst the blankets. So, instead of his night-gear, the General struggled into a stiffer black stock and a tighter frock-coat even than those which he had discarded, and arming himself with his formidable bamboo (how he wished the head and shoulders of his unknown correspondent were within its range), strutted off to Noodles’, feeling, as he cocked his chin up, and threw his chest out, and struck his cane against the sunny pavement, that he was still young and _débonnaire_, as in the _beaux jours_ at Cheltenham twenty, ay, thirty years ago.