“I don't know that,” replied Dolly. “It be true, I ha' heard mother zay, you cocked your cap at Zaul, yourself; as you did to many more, though you never could trap any body to have'ee, aunt; but I never could believe it.” “The vellow did, once upon a time, look up to me,” said Dolly, lifting her chin, and curling her thin and slightly-bearded lip; “but I scorned'un. I wouldn't ha' had un if his skin were stuffed wi' gold.” “And yet you do blame Meg vor scorning Phil Govier! Vor my part,--I were a child, to be zure,--but by what I do recollect of'em, I'd rather ha' had Zaul, wi'out a zhoe to's, voot, than Philip Govier, if every hair on the head o' un were strung wi' pearls.” “Don't talk to me, Tab,” cried her now incensed aunt, flouncing off; “it don't become thee. I do zay it ha' come home to her;--her zon be zent to the county gaol, vor murdering the man whose heart she a'most broke more than twenty year agone:--get over that if you can. It ha' came home to her, and I'll bide by it;--wi' her blue clocked ztockings, and putting up her chit of a daughter to smirk wi' the young 'squire!--I ha'n't a' got patience wi' zuch pride.” The supervisor, who was going his rounds, and intended to sleep that night at The Chough and Stump, now rode up, on his sturdy little grey cob; and before he could alight, some of the loiterers about the porch had, in part, acquainted him with the cause of their being assembled round the inn-door. The old man, however, as he said, could make “neither head nor tail” of what he heard; and hastened, as well as his infirmities would allow, into the kitchen. The landlord rose on his appearance, and conducted the spare and paralytic old man, to the post of honour, in the settle, between his own seat and that of the exciseman,--a cunning-looking, thick-set, fat, or, to use an expressive West Country adjective, podgy, little man, between forty and fifty; with a round, sallow, bloated face, begemmed here and there with groups of pimply excrescences, resembling the warts that are occasionally seen on the cheek that is turned to the sun of a wounded pumpkin. One of the exciseman's eyes glared at his beholder, dull and void of expression, while the other was almost concealed beneath its lids;--a circumstance occasioned by an inveterate habit of winking, all his life, at every tenth word, with the latter; which operation he was totally unable to perform with the former. “Here hath been a sad to-do, sir,” said Gough, addressing the supervisor, as soon as the latter was comfortably seated; “a sad to-do, indeed.” “Ah! so I hear, Gough,--so I hear;--but what is it?--No affray with the excise, I hope.”