plenty of a rural establishment for the last twenty years, and was a wonder to all her neighbours inasmuch as she was still alive. To this gentleman Mr. Durnford presented himself one sunny afternoon. He found the Baronet in a panelled parlour, seated at a table covered with documents of a business character. Sir John was big and burly, wore leather breeches and top-boots in winter and summer, and had all his clothes cut in a style which suggested the hunting-field rather than the drawing-room. He was a man who would start in the winter starlight, before the first ray of dawn had begun to glimmer in the eastern sky, in order to ride fifteen miles to a meet. He had a couple of packs, a magnificent stud of hunters, hunted four times a week, and considered every guinea squandered which was not spent upon kennel or stable. He was prouder of being master of hounds than he would have been of being Prime Minister. Herrick glanced at the whip-racks, the rows of spurs, the vizards and brushes, which adorned the walls, and at once understood the kind of man with whom he had to deal, and he was prepared to encounter a frank off-hand incivility rather than hypocritical courtesy. He stated his business briefly. "I have a very particular reason, sir, for being interested in the history of a member of your family who fell upon evil fortunes, and died young, leaving a motherless infant behind him." "My good sir, my family tree has spread deuced wide since the Chumleighs--an old Norman race--first took root in the land; and if you expect me to give information about every beggarly twig that has withered upon it within the last half-century--" "This gentleman I take to have been a somewhat near relation, Sir John, since it was to you he turned in the hour of his direst necessities." "Yes, sir, they all do that: they go to a well-to-do relative as naturally as an old dog-fox goes to ground." "Do you remember a cousin who came to you in the year nine--'twas in the autumn, shortly after Malplaquet--with a little girl, a mere baby--" "I'm not likely to forget the fact, sir. What, a trumpery third or fourth cousin to come to my house, with a squaller of eighteen months old, expecting to be housed and fed for an indefinite period; since, having once found comfortable quarters, that kind of vagrant would not be inclined to resume his march in a hurry! It was as much as I could do to be barely civil to that idle vagabond; but I mastered my indignation so far as to offer him a substantial meal, which he refused, and a guinea, which he flung to the footman who showed him the way out--"