this time, however, it was past eleven o'clock; the free potations of all the gentlemen, and indeed (to be candid) of more than one of the ladies, were beginning to _tell_, and the noise and confusion were very great. Fierce confused sounds issued from the servants' hall, where it proved that a great fight was going on between Pumpkin the gardener, and a man who insisted on shouting "Titmouse forever--down with Aubrey!" Pumpkin, I am not sorry to say, had much the best of it, and beat his opponent, after a severe encounter, into silence and submission. Then there were songs sung in all the rooms at once--speeches made, half-a-dozen at the same time; in short, never before had such doings been witnessed, or such uproar heard, within the decorous, dignified, and venerable precincts of Yatton. Scenes ensued which really baffle description. Mr. Titmouse, of course, drank prodigiously, although Mr. Gammon never left his side, and checked him fifty times when he was about to fill his glass. The excitement thus produced by wine will, I trust, in some measure mitigate the reader's indignation at hearing of a little incident which occurred, in which Titmouse was concerned, and which, about half past three or four o'clock in the morning, served to bring that brilliant entertainment to a somewhat abrupt and rather unpleasant termination. Scarcely knowing where he was, or what he was about, I am sorry to say, that while standing, as well as he could, beside Miss Wildfire, to dance for the fifth time with her--a plump, fair-faced, good-natured girl of about nineteen or twenty--he suddenly threw his arms around her, and imprinted half-a-dozen kisses on her forehead, lips, cheek, and neck, before she could recover from the confusion into which this monstrous outrage had thrown her. Her faint shriek reached her father's ears, while he was, in a distant part of the room, persecuting Miss Quirk with drunken and profligate impertinence. Hastily approaching the quarter whence his daughter's voice had issued, he beheld her just extricated from the insolent embrace of the half-unconscious Titmouse, and greatly agitated. With flaming eye and outstretched arm, he approached his unfortunate little host, and seizing hold of his right ear, almost wrung it out of his head, Titmouse actually yelling with the pain which he experienced. Still retaining his hold, uttering the while most fearful imprecations--Sir Harkaway gave him three violent kicks upon the seat of honor, the last of them sending him spinning into the arms of old Mr. Quirk, who was hurrying up to his relief, and who fell flat on the floor with the violent concussion. Then Miss Quirk rushed forward and screamed; a scene of dreadful confusion ensued; and at length the infuriated and half-drunken baronet, forced away by his wife and his daughter, aided by several of the company, quitted the Hall, and got into his carriage, uttering fearful threats