in my life. You may laugh he whipped me off my legs; fellow spun me like
a top; and while he was orationing, a donkey calls, "Turbot! ain't you a
flat fish?" and he swings round, "Not for a fool's hook!" and out they
hustled the villain for a Tory. I never saw anything like it.'

'That repartee wouldn't have done with a Dutchman or a Torbay trawler,'
said Stukely Culbrett. 'But let us hear more.'

'Is it fair?' Miss Halkett murmured anxiously to Mrs. Lespel, who
returned a flitting shrug.

'Charming women follow Beauchamp, you know,' Palmet proceeded, as he
conceived, to confirm and heighten the tale of success. 'There's a Miss
Denham, niece of a doctor, a Dr . . . . Shot--Shrapnel! a
wonderfully good-looking, clever-looking girl, comes across him in half-
a-dozen streets to ask how he's getting on, and goes every night to his
meetings, with a man who 's a writer and has a mad wife; a man named
Lydia-no, that's a woman--Lydiard. It's rather a jumble; but you should
see her when Beauchamp's on his legs and speaking.'

'Mr. Lydiard is in Bevisham?' Mrs. Wardour-Devereux remarked.

'I know the girl,' growled Mr. Lespel. 'She comes with that rascally
doctor and a bobtail of tea-drinking men and women and their brats to
Northeden Heath--my ground. There they stand and sing.'

'Hymns?'inquired Mr. Culbrett.

'I don't know what they sing. And when it rains they take the liberty to
step over my bank into my plantation. Some day I shall have them