failed him. The secret consciousness of this last fact made him more
venturesome and reckless than ever. "Time," he swore, "should never play
_him_ tricks. He was as good a man as ever he was. There was a quarter
of a million, more or less, to be got through yet, and, by Jove, he
would see it out!" Of course he did not swear by Jove; for, as we have
said, he kept a chaplain, and was therefore no heathen.

One of the arguments that the mothers of those young ladies who sought
his hand were wont to make use of, to their great comfort, was that Mr.
Carew was a churchman. There was a private chapel at Crompton, the
existence of which, of course, explained why his presence did not grace
the parish church. Then his genealogy was of the most satisfactory
description. Carews had dwelt at Crompton in direct succession for many
a century. Charles I., it is almost unnecessary to state, had slept
there--that most locomotive of monarchs seems to have honored all old
English mansions with a night's visit--and had hunted in the chase next
morning. Queen Elizabeth had also been most graciously pleased to visit
her subject, John Carew, on which occasion a wooden tower had been
erected for her in the park, from which to see "ten buckes, all having
fayre lawe, pulled down with grey-houndes;" she shot deer, too, with her
own virgin hands, for which purpose "a cross-bowe was delivered to her
by a nymph with a sweet song." These things, however, were in no way
commemorated. Carew was all in all: his devouring egotism swallowed up
historical association. His favorite female bull-dog, with her pups,
slept in the royal martyr's apartment. The places in Crompton Chase held
remarkable were those where its present owner had made an
unprecedentedly long shot, or had beaten off one of the wild cattle
without a weapon, or had run down a stag on foot. There was no relic of
ancient times preserved whatever, except that at midsummer, as in Lyme,
that very curious custom was kept of driving the red deer round the