“John Carter,” said the worthy baronet, “let me address to you a few words on the sin of poaching. Poaching, John Carter--is--is a sin of which too many are guilty, owing to the lenity of our most excellent laws. I think that if everybody thought, as I think, of the moral heinousness of this offence, nobody would be guilty of it. Poaching is not yet made felony; but there is no saying how soon it may be made so, if the crime be persisted in. It is a moral offence of the greatest enormity, and is one of those crying, national sins, which may one day or other bring down the vengeance of heaven on our guilty country. Now, John Carter, if you go to gaol for six months, I hope the tread-mill and the chaplain will work a thorough reformation in your morals.” Much more to the same purpose did the worthy magistrate say to John Carter; but it did, we fear, very little good, for John Carter and the baronet’s last pheasant were missing on one and the same morning: This digression we have made for the purpose of shewing how truly eloquent and morally impressive the baronet could be when the enormity of the offence demanded an adequate severity of reprehension. His worship would have thought the epithet “wild young dog” a designation by far too lenient for a poacher. But the crime of seduction, especially in an hereditary legislator, looked in the sight of the unpaid one as comparatively a slight offence, scarcely an offence at all. More than suspecting, from Colonel Crop’s look and manner, that a pursuit of this nature had brought the heir of Smatterton down to the venerable seat of his ancestors, the worthy baronet proceeded to enquire of the young lord’s convenient friend more particularly concerning the person whose charms had fascinated the young lord. Now the gallant colonel was not quite certain that it would be proper and becoming for him to communicate to the worthy magistrate the whole truth, at least what he thought to be the truth; he therefore hesitated and looked knowing: but he had no great tact or dexterity in keeping secrets; so, after a few ineffectual attempts to hold his peace and keep his counsel, he gave the worthy baronet to understand that the lady with whom he had the pleasure of dining at Neverden Hall, was the person on whom the hereditary legislator had cast the eyes of affection. “What!” exclaimed the astonished baronet, “Do I hear aright? Do you mean to tell me that Lord Spoonbill has employed you to make dishonorable proposals to a lady under my roof, a relation too of my own?”