This is all to be altered now. It was not very bright in Sir Percy's time, and it has been deadly-lively indeed since his death; but the Sleeping Beauty herself was never more astonished by the arrival of the prince than was Mrs. Austin, the old housekeeper at Redmoor, by the advent of a tall hook-nosed gentleman, who announced himself as Captain Bligh, and who brought a letter from Sir Charles Mitford, duly signed and sealed with the family arms, which Mrs. Austin knew so well, ordering implicit obedience to whatever orders the bearer might choose to give. With him came a sleek-looking man with close-cut hair and a white cravat, whom Mrs. Austin at first took for a clergyman, until she discovered, he was the stud-groom. This person inspected the stables, and the remnant of the late Sir Percy's stud, and reported to Captain Bligh that the stables was pigsties, and as for the hanimals, he should think they must be the 'osses as Noah put into the hark. A fresh _régime_ and fresh work to be done by everybody under it. No more chance for Tummus coachman and Willum helper to just ride harses to ex'cise and dryaive 'em out in trap whenever wanted to go crass to races or market, or give missus and young 'uns a little change. No more chance for Dawniel Todd the Scotch gardener to make his market of all the fruits, flowers, and vegetables, selling them to Mrs. Dean or Miss Archdeacon, or to the officers up in barracks. Not much chance for the head-keeper and his two under-trappers, who really had all their work to do to keep the game down after Sir Percy's death, so strictly had that terror of poachers preserved; though they thought they saw their way to balancing any loss which they might sustain from being unable any longer to supply the poulterers of the county town, in a house full of ardent sportsmen, with innumerable heavy tips after battue-days, and an occasional dog to break or to sell. The old lodge-gates had begun to grow rusty from disuse; but they are constantly on the stretch now, for carts with ladders and scaffolding-poles, and men in light linen blouses daubed with paint, were streaming in and out from morning till night. There is a new roof being put on the stables, and the outhouses are being painted and whitewashed throughout; and the mastiff, who has been bred on the true English principle of "keeping himself to himself," has been driven quite mad at the influx of new faces, and has shown such a convincing set of teeth to the painter's men, that they have declined proceeding with their work until he has been removed. So Tummus coachman and Willum helper have removed his big kennel to the back of the stables; and here Turk lies, with nothing but his black nose visible in the clean straw, until he catches sight of a painter or a tiler pursuing his occupation high up in mid-air, and then with one baleful spring Turk bounds out of his kennel, and unmistakably expresses his fervent wish to have that skilled labourer's life's-blood.