“My dear friends,” he said, “don’t imagine that these are disguises that I amuse myself with, or of my own invention. They were the odd fancy of an uncle of mine, a great woolstapler, well known to many here. As he rode far and wide through the country, buying up wool from the farmers in summer, he used to put on one of these noses, or this blazing beard and hair, as he approached some village; the wonder and even terror that he excited were very amusing to him. Boys ran crying—‘Oh, look at that man’s nose! What a nose!’ People looked in astonishment; but greater was their astonishment when on returning through the same village soon after, the boys, seeing him at a distance, would cry out—‘The man with the nose!’ and, behold, on his coming up his nose was just like any other person’s. I am afraid sometimes he must have occasioned some boys a beating, or at least a good snubbing, when they cried—‘Here comes the man with the nose!’ and the lookers out saw only a very shapely and befitting nose. Sometimes the women said—‘Poor gentleman, what a misfortune! Hush, children, you may be struck with such a nose if you mock!’ One woman greatly amused him: her little daughter was dancing in delight at the approach of the man with the nose, on the ash-heap by the door, but the poor woman seeing only a very respectable gentleman, with no nasal enormity whatever, gave the girl a slap, saying—‘Come in, little minx, I’ll teach thee to be making thy i—o—oms there on the ash-midden. I’ll give thee a lection!’” Such was the story of this strange man, who in truth very much resembled the portraits of sentimental and unsentimental Laurence Sterne; but William Fairfax said aloud,—“George, thou talks of thy uncle, but wilt thou take thy affirmation that thou dost not amuse thyself in thy journeys through the country with these phantasmagoria? What says thy man, William Theobald?” “Ask master himself,” said William; “he is of age.” “Well then, George Barthe—what say’st thou?” “I say nothing,” replied Barthe, amid a general laughter. Thorsby was delighted with the fiery hair and beard, and would put them on, to the great sport of the young people. And then he would insist on some of the young ladies either putting them on, or trying one of the noses. At this instant, however, a singular note, high in a thickly-ivied tree just behind, caught their ears. “What is that?” asked a dozen voices. “It is a note of a nightingale,” said some one. “No, that cannot be,” said Mr. Thomas Clavering, “the nightingales have long ceased for this year.” The sound recommenced and went on. “It is a thrush,” said Mr. Clavering. “No,—what is it? It is a thrush, and it is not.” A loud, clear, warbling again issued from the ivy aloft in the tree. It was to ordinary ears a thrush, and a very fine one. But Mr. Clavering, most intimate with English birds’ notes, said,—“No, it was no thrush; he believed it to be a man, but an extraordinarily clever one, and where was he?”