The barber was making his politest acknowledgments, and was assuring the gentleman that he felt highly honoured and gratified by his handsome invitation, when old Farmer Garbutt, a regular customer of Kucky's for more than thirty years past, although a stout "church-and-king" man, pushed his burly person in at the little shop door, and gruffly bidding the barber "good-morning," sat down in the shaving-chair, which the gentleman had just quitted. Farmer Garbutt could not have come at a moment when he was less welcome; but Bucky Sarson could not decline to shave a beard he had shorn for so long a period, and therefore politely assured the strange gentleman that he would be with him, at his inn, in the course of a quarter of an hour. Ere the farmer's beard was cleansed, however, more than one additional chin had gathered round the chair; and what was most vexing to Kucky, in his impatient mood, was the "striking fact" that all the chins and their beards belonged to the most extreme and sturdy opposers of Kucky's republican principles to be found among his regular customers. With all his acquirement of _suave_ manners, the poor barber was greatly in danger of going into a passion, as he heard, first one, and then another, allude, jeeringly, to the persecution that was commencing against Kucky's favourite doctrines. Yet he kept down the rising storm within, though with a considerable struggle:— "Ay, ay—they'll soon hang all the levellers out o' the way, I'll warrant 'em!" said gruff Garbutt, rolling his eye in wicked waggery at his neighbours, and then threateningly at Kucky. "What else can folk expect that side with cutting off kings' heads?" cried Bobby Sparrow, a dapper little master-tailor, who made and repaired habits for the parson, and all the genteel people, of Caistor and its vicinity. "More by token—such folk as would pull down all the parish churches, and murder all the Protestants!" added old Davy Gregson, a fat little retired man of business, who liked to enjoy his joke,—sitting in a corner of the old shop, and thrusting his tongue grotesquely into his cheek,—although he was nearly fourscore. "You will please to remember, gentlemen," interjected the barber, driven to the extremity of his temper, "that _I_ am _not_ an advocate either for cutting off kings' heads, or pulling down parish churches, or murdering people of any religion, much more my own." "But ye take part with rogues that do, neighbour Kucky," said Bobby Sparrow, with provoking pertness,—"and the more's the shame to you!" "Ay, marry, good faith—that he does!" exclaimed old Davy Gregson, enjoying the barber's apparent soreness; "and it has always been held that the abettor is as bad as the thief or the murderer!"