The baronet having thus spoken laughed, and the colonel, to shew his politeness, laughed too, but he did not know why, unless it were for sympathy. “But, colonel,” continued the gratuitous dispenser of hedge and ditch and steel-trap and spring-gun justice, “what is the meaning of this almost flying visit which my Lord Spoonbill has just now paid to Smatterton? My people told me this morning that the young gentleman was off by daybreak, posting back again to town.” Colonel Crop looked wise, or screwed his features into that kind of expression which he was pleased to think wise; and with that kind of tone which almost asks for incredulity, and intimates that at least only part of the truth is told, he replied: “His lordship came down to give orders about some improvements to be made at the castle.” This expression answered the purpose, and the curious baronet, being from the nature of his office accustomed to the interrogative system, proceeded with a sceptical smile to ask: “Ah, colonel, are you sure that is all? Is not there some sly amour going on? His lordship is a wild young dog, I have heard.” Thereat the baronet chuckled, and the colonel smiled so gently and so silently that Lord Chesterfield himself would not have pronounced him vulgar or ill bred. And the two worthy ones looked at each other very knowingly; and thus the colonel let out the secret without speaking a word. Some persons may imagine that the mode in which the baronet spoke of the amatory transgressions of Lord Spoonbill was rather too flippant for a magistrate; and those persons may perhaps be right; but let us not omit to tell those persons, that this same magistrate, when engaged in the discharge of his magisterial duties, and when sitting on the bench, looked as wise and as grave and as demure as any magistrate need to look, and gave to transgressors a goodly word of exhortation, and dwelt with copious and convincing eloquence on the wickedness of violating our most excellent laws. Everybody in that neighbourhood remembers the impressive admonition which he gave to an old man who was convicted at the quarter sessions of having a bit of string in his pocket, and therefore strongly suspected of a design of a malicious nature against the game.