with the comfort of this place, and the choice tobacco and cordials. I have not enjoyed an evening so much, God bless me if I know when!’

‘Your worship,’ said I, ‘makes me more proud than I well know what to do with. Of all the things that please and lead us into happy sleep at night, the first and chiefest is to think that we have pleased a visitor.’

‘Then, John, thou hast deserved good sleep; for I am not pleased easily. But although our family is not so high now as it hath been, I have enough of the gentleman left to be pleased when good people try me. My father, Sir Ensor, was better than I in this great element of birth, and my son Carver is far worse. Ætas parentum, what is it, my boy? I hear that you have been at a grammar-school.’

‘So I have, your worship, and at a very good one; but I only got far enough to make more tail than head of Latin.’

‘Let that pass,’ said the Counsellor; ‘John, thou art all the wiser.’ And the old man shook his hoary locks, as if Latin had been his ruin. I looked at him sadly, and wondered whether it might have so ruined me, but for God’s mercy in stopping it.