Mr. Cartwright raised his voice much beyond its usual pitch, to answer; and at this moment Sally and the traveller, moved by a very natural feeling of curiosity, joined the group. "Why, what's the gentleman after?" said the wayfaring man, deliberately taking out a pair of huge near-sighted spectacles to examine into the mystery. "I should take un to be a parson by his cloth; only I never did hear of a reverend climbing a ladder, save and except the famous Dr. Dodd, as I've read of in the Newgate Calendar." This harangue, short as it was, saved the Mowbray Arms from farther molestation for the present; for the vicar withdrew his foot. But the glance with which he greeted the speaker was very nearly awful. Dorothy Freeman, however, turned on her heel, nothing heeding it: her guest and daughter followed her into the house; Jem quietly took up his ladder and proceeded on his business; and the Vicar of Wrexhill, with feelings which the hope of future vengeance alone enabled him to endure with decent philosophy, was fain to turn on his heel also and walk off. END OF THE SECOND VOLUME. VOLUME THE THIRD. CHAPTER I. MR. AND MRS. CARTWRIGHT'S LETTER. The very elegant cab, with its beautiful horse and accoutrements, led round to the door of the Vicarage as his own--the agreeable vivacity, as he always thought it, of his remarkably clever son--the multitude of low bows and lower curtsies which greeted him as he drove along--and above all, perhaps, the merry peal from the church tower, which had been ordered by himself to ring him into Mowbray Park, produced altogether so favourable an effect upon the nerves of the vicar, that when he stopped at the portico of his mansion, his spirits and his temper appeared altogether to have recovered the shock they had received at the foot of the sign-post. The family party which met at dinner consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright, Miss Cartwright, Mr. Jacob Cartwright, and poor Charles Mowbray and his sister Fanny. Mowbray thought the genial hour of dinner might probably be the most favourable for mentioning the invitation of Sir Gilbert and Lady Harrington to his sister and Miss Torrington; an idea which probably occurred to him in consequence of the remarkably well pleased and complaisant air visible on his stepfather's countenance as he took his place at the bottom of the table. Poor Charles! he made this observation, and he determined to profit by it; though it was not without a pang that he saw himself thus pushed from the stool that nature and fortune seemed to have assigned to him. "I am glad," thought he, "that the proud Rosalind, who advised me to lay my fortune at the feet of no one, is not here to witness the moment at which I take my place at my father's board, Lord of my presence and no land beside!"