'Tregarva, master wants you in the study. And please, sir, I think you had better go in too; master knows you're here, and you might speak a word for good, for he's raging like a mad bull.' 'I knew it would come at last,' said Tregarva, quietly, as he followed Lancelot into the house. It had come at last. The squire was sitting in his study, purple with rage, while his daughters were trying vainly to pacify him. All the men-servants, grooms, and helpers, were drawn up in line along the wall, and greeted Tregarva, whom they all heartily liked, with sly and sorrowful looks of warning, 'Here, you sir; you--, look at this! Is this the way you repay me? I, who have kept you out of the workhouse, treated you like my own child? And then to go and write filthy, rascally, Radical ballads on me and mine! This comes of your Methodism, you canting, sneaking hypocrite!--you viper--you adder--you snake--you--!' And the squire, whose vocabulary was not large, at a loss for another synonym, rounded off his oration by a torrent of oaths; at which Argemone, taking Honoria's hand, walked proudly out of the room, with one glance at Lancelot of mingled shame and love. 'This is your handwriting, you villain! you know it' (and the squire tossed the fatal paper across the table); 'though I suppose you'll lie about it. How can you depend on fellows who speak evil of their betters? But all the servants are ready to swear it's your handwriting.' 'Beg your pardon, sir,' interposed the old butler, 'we didn't quite say that; but we'll all swear it isn't ours.' 'The paper is mine,' said Tregarva. 'Confound your coolness! He's no more ashamed of it than--Read it out, Smith, read it out every word; and let them all hear how this pauper, this ballad-singing vagabond, whom I have bred up to insult me, dares to abuse his own master.' 'I have not abused you, sir,' answered Tregarva. 'I will be heard, sir!' he went on in a voice which made the old man start from his seat and clench his fist but he sat down again. 'Not a word in it is meant for you. You have been a kind and a good master to me. Ask where you will if I was ever heard to say a word against you. I would have cut off my right hand sooner than write about you or yours. But what I had to say about others lies there, and I am not ashamed of it.' 'Not against me? Read it out, Smith, and see if every word of it don't hit at me, and at my daughters, too, by--, worst of all! Read it out, I say!' Lancelot hesitated; but the squire, who was utterly beside himself, began to swear at him also, as masters of hounds are privileged to do; and Lancelot, to whom the whole scene was becoming every moment more and more intensely ludicrous, thought it best to take up the paper and begin:-- 'A ROUGH RHYME ON A ROUGH MATTER. 'The merry brown hares came leaping Over the crest of the hill, Where the clover and corn lay sleeping Under the moonlight still.