He considered, moreover, that his brother had incurred at his hand the most lasting obligations; and that, having procured Audley's return to Parliament, and defended his interests at the risk of his own life, he had an absolute right to dictate to that gentleman how to vote--upon all matters at least connected with the landed interest. And when, not very long after Audley took his seat in Parliament (which he did not do for some months), he thought proper both to vote and to speak in a manner wholly belying the promises the Squire had made on his behalf, Mr. Hazeldean wrote him such a trimmer, that it could not but produce an unconciliatory reply. Shortly afterward, the Squire's exasperation reached the culminating point, for, having to pass through Lansmere on a market-day, he was hooted by the very farmers whom he had induced to vote for his brother; and, justly imputing the disgrace to Audley, he never heard the name of that traitor to the land mentioned, without a heightened color and an indignant expletive. Monsieur de Ruqueville--who was the greatest wit of his day--had, like the Squire, a half-brother, with whom he was not on the best of terms, and of whom he always spoke as his "_frère de loin_." Audley Egerton was thus Squire Hazeldean's "_distant brother_!"--Enough of these explanatory antecedents--let us return to the Stocks. CHAPTER XI. The Squire's carpenters were taken from the park pales, and set to work at the parish stocks. Then came the painter and colored them, a beautiful dark blue, with a white border--and a white rim round the holes--with an ornamental flourish in the middle. It was the gayest public edifice in the whole village--though the village possessed no less than three other monuments of the Vitruvian genius, of the Hazeldeans: to wit, the alms-house, the school, and the parish pump. A more elegant, enticing, coquettish pair of stocks never gladdened the eye of a justice of the peace.