describe the feelings of our tanner at this spectacle--feelings which
became the more violent from the absolute silence which he imposed on
himself upon this occasion. He instantly decided in his own mind that
this injury was perpetrated by O'Neill, in revenge for his arrest; and
went privately to the attorney to inquire what was to be done, on his
part, to secure legal vengeance.

The attorney unluckily--or at least, as Mr. Hill thought, unluckily--had
been sent for, half an hour before, by a gentleman at some distance from
Hereford, to draw up a will: so that our tanner was obliged to postpone
his legal operations.

We forbear to recount his return, and how many times he walked up and
down the close to view his scattered bark, and to estimate the damage
that had been done to him. At length that hour came which usually
suspends all passions by the more imperious power of appetite--the hour
of dinner: an hour of which it was never needful to remind Mr. Hill by
watch, clock, or dial; for he was blessed with a punctual appetite, and
powerful as punctual: so powerful, indeed, that it often excited the
spleen of his more genteel or less hungry wife. "Bless my stars! Mr.
Hill," she would oftentimes say, "I am really downright ashamed to see
you eat so much; and when company is to dine with us, I do wish you would
take a snack by way of a damper before dinner, that you may not look so
prodigious famishing and ungenteel."

Upon this hint, Mr. Hill commenced a practice, to which he ever
afterwards religiously adhered, of going, whether there was to be company
or no company, into the kitchen regularly every day, half an hour before
dinner, to take a slice from the roast or the boiled before it went up to
table. As he was this day, according to his custom, in the kitchen,