'Court her, serenade her,' said the captain; 'blockade the port, lay siege to the citadel. I'd give a year of service for your chances, Greg. Half a word from her, and you have your horses ready.' 'She's past po'chaises,' Squire Gregory sighed. 'She's to be won by a bold stroke, brother Greg.' 'Oh, Lord, no! She's past po'chaises.' 'Humph! it's come to be half-bottle, half-beauty, with your worship, Greg, I suspect.' 'No. I tell you, William, she's got her mind on that fellow. You can't po'chay her.' 'After he jilted her for her sister? Wrong, Greg, wrong. You are muddled. She has a fright about matrimony--a common thing at her age, I am told. Where's the man?' 'In the Bench, of course. Where'd you have him?' 'I, sir? If I knew my worst enemy to be there, I'd send him six dozen of the best in my cellar.' Temple shot a walnut at me. I pretended to be meditating carelessly, and I had the heat and roar of a conflagration round my head. Presently the captain said, 'Are you sure the man's in the Bench?' 'Cock,' Squire Gregory replied. 'He had money from his wife.' 'And he had the wheels to make it go.' Here they whispered in earnest. 'Oh, the Billings were as rich as the Belthams,' said the captain, aloud. 'Pretty nigh, William.' 'That's our curse, Greg. Money settled on their male issue, and money in hand; by the Lord! we've always had the look of a pair of highwaymen lurking for purses, when it was the woman, the woman, penniless, naked, mean, destitute; nothing but the woman we wanted. And there was one apiece for us. Greg, old boy, when will the old county show such another couple of Beauties! Greg, sir, you're not half a man, or you'd have carried her, with your, opportunities. The fellow's in the Bench, you say? How are you cocksure of that, Mr. Greg?' 'Company,' was the answer; and the captain turned to Temple and me, apologizing profusely for talking over family matters with his brother after a separation of three years. I had guessed but hastily at the subject of their conversation until they mentioned the Billings, the family of my maternal grandmother. The name was like a tongue of fire shooting up in a cloud of smoke: I saw at once that the man in the Bench must be my father, though what the Bench was exactly, and where it was, I had no idea, and as I was left to imagination I became, as usual, childish in my notions, and brooded upon thoughts of the Man in the Iron Mask; things I dared not breathe to Temple, of whose manly sense I stood in awe when under these distracting influences. 'Remember our feast in the combe?' I sang across the table to him. 'Never forget it!' said he; and we repeated the tale of the goose at Rippenger's school to our entertainers, making them laugh.