This question seemed greatly to increase the wrath of the man of law. He looked at Miss Vernon with such an air of spite and resentment, as laid me under a strong temptation to knock him off his horse with the butt of my whip, which I only suppressed in consideration of his insignificance.

“Farmer Rutledge, ma’am?” said the clerk, so soon as his indignation permitted him to articulate, “Farmer Rutledge is in as handsome enjoyment of his health as you are—it’s all a bam, ma’am—all a bamboozle and a bite that affair of his illness; and if you did not know as much before you know it now, ma’am.”

“La you there now!” replied Miss Vernon, with an affectation of extreme and simple wonder, “sure you don’t say so, Mr. Jobson?”

“But I do say so, ma’am,” rejoined the incensed scribe; “and moreover I say, that the old miserly clod- breaker called me pettifogger—pettifogger, ma’am—and said I came to hunt for a job, ma’am—which I have no more right to have said to me than any other gentleman of my profession, ma’am—especially as I am clerk to the peace, having and holding said office under Trigesimo Septimo Henricj Octavi, and Primo Gulielmi,—the first of King William, ma’am, of glorious and immortal memory—our immortal deliverer from Papists and pretenders, and wooden shoes and warmingpans, Miss Vernon.”

“Sad things, these wooden shoes and warming-pans,” retorted the young lady, who seemed to take pleasure in augmenting his wrath;—“and it is a comfort you don’t seem to want a warming-pan at present, Mr. Jobson. I am afraid Gaffer Rutledge has not confined his incivility to language—Are you sure he did not give you a beating?”

“Beating, ma’am!—no”—(very shortly) “no man alive shall beat me, I promise you, ma’am.”

“That is according as you happen to merit, sir,” said I; “for your mode of speaking to this young lady is so unbecoming, that, if you do not change your tone, I shall think it worth while to chastise you myself.”

“Chastise, sir? and—me, sir?—Do you know whom you speak to, sir?”

“Yes, sir,” I replied; “you say yourself you are clerk of peace to the county; and Gaffer Rutledge says you are a pettifogger; and in neither capacity are you entitled to be impertinent to a young lady of fashion.”

Miss Vernon laid her hand on my arm, and exclaimed, “Come, Mr. Osbaldistone, I will have no assaults and battery on Mr. Jobson; I am not in sufficient charity with him to permit a single touch of your whip—why, he would live on it for a term at least. Besides, you have already hurt his feelings sufficiently—you have called him impertinent.”

“I don’t value his language, Miss,” said the clerk, somewhat crestfallen; “besides, impertinent is not an actionable word; but pettifogger is slander in the highest degree, and that I will make Gaffer Rutledge know to his cost, and all who maliciously repeat the same to the breach of the public peace, and the taking away of my private good name.”

“Never mind that, Mr. Jobson,” said Miss Vernon; “you know, where there is nothing, your own law allows that the king himself must lose his rights; and, for the taking away of your good name, I pity the poor fellow who gets it, and wish you joy of losing it with all my heart.”

“Very well, ma’am—good evening, ma’am—I have no more to say—only there are laws against Papists, which it would be well for the land were they better executed. There’s third and fourth Edward VI., of antiphoners, missals, grailes, processionals, manuals, legends, pies, portuasses, and those that have such trinkets in their possession, Miss Vernon—and there’s summoning of Papists to take the oaths—and there are popish recusant convicts under the first of his present Majesty—ay, and there are penalties for hearing mass. See twenty-third of Queen Elizabeth, and third James First, chapter twenty-fifth.—And there are estates to be registered, and deeds and wills to be enrolled, and double taxes to be made, according to the acts in that case made and provided——”