"He's a coosin o' yours, squoire; and long as I've known Suffolk, I've never known nothing but good o' you and yourn. But if your baronite has been and done this! Oh, Mr. Carbury! If I was to wring his neck round, you wouldn't say as how I was wrong; would ye, now?" Roger could hardly answer the question. On general grounds the wringing of Sir Felix's neck, let the immediate cause for such a performance have been what it might, would have seemed to him to be a good deed. The world would be better, according to his thinking, with Sir Felix out of it than in it. But still the young man was his cousin and a Carbury, and to such a one as John Crumb he was bound to defend any member of his family as far as he might be defensible. "They says as how he was groping about Sheep's Acre when he was last here, a hiding himself and skulking behind hedges. Drat 'em all. They've gals enough of their own,--them fellows. Why can't they let a fellow alone? I'll do him a mischief, Master Roger; I wull;--if he's had a hand in this." Poor John Crumb! When he had his mistress to win he could find no words for himself; but was obliged to take an eloquent baker with him to talk for him. Now in his anger he could talk freely enough. "But you must first learn that Sir Felix has had anything to do with this, Mr. Crumb." "In coorse; in coorse. That's right. That's right. Must l'arn as he did it, afore I does it. But when I have l'arned!"-- And John Crumb clenched his fist as though a very short lesson would suffice for him upon this occasion.