Grenville drank it--surlily enough; but it warmed him to a reluctant if temporary urbanity. He was one of those who cannot concede a thing gracefully. He had suspected, perhaps wished to suspect, this man; his suspicions allayed, he grudged himself his own convincement. But already his civility was tempered with contempt when he saw the sort of creature he had to deal with. He had no eyes for any tragedy in this ruin; but only for the baseness of its material aspect; and when, as the dinner proceeded, and the ex-Judge, stimulated by copious libations, steadied, and ran a brief spasmodic stage of brilliancy, only to slide unexpectedly into a condition of maudlin incoherence, he shrugged his shoulders disdainfully, and, virtually turning them on his host, addressed himself for the remainder of the meal to Brion. Raleigh seemed to feel the young man’s discomfort, and to sympathise with it; but he could do no more than endeavour to keep the conversation on as natural a plane as possible. ‘This house?’ he asked once, interested in some chance allusion to the place: ‘it is a rare and old one?’ Brion did not know; but Grenville, who was well posted in local history, answered dogmatically for him:-- ‘’Twas re-built in the Crookback’s reign, by one Miles Bagott, a Yorkist franklin. That was always a family, cry you mercy, young gentleman, to back the wrong horse.’ Bagott, some spark rekindling in his fuddled brain, looked the length of the table, with glazed eyes and a tipsy leer. ‘The wrong horse,’ said he, in a thick disjointed voice--‘the wrong horse may suttimes have the better tidle, and may hap to come to its own in the end.’ All eyes were turned on the speaker. ‘The better title, master?’ asked Grenville, with a sneer. ‘What better title? To the crown?’ The drunkard pursed his lips and nodded his head extravagantly. He had said, his manner expressed, all he meant to say. The two visitors exchanged a quick glance; and then Grenville remarked, as if by design:-- ‘Nathless I would not put Queen Mary of Scotland’s chance at a copper-mite.’ Both he and Raleigh seemed to wait for an answer; but none coming, save in more inebrious nods and chuckles, the former, with a ‘Bah!’ contemptuously uttered under his breath, turned again to Brion, who sat quite at a loss for the meaning of this passage, and continued:-- ‘Withal this family _hath_ been’--with a significant emphasis on the ‘hath’--‘more creditable in its members than always in its tenants. You’ve heard of him that lived and died here before your day?’ ‘Matthew Fulk the miser, Sir?’