Was this audacious Unknown taking an inventory of the church and the Hall
for the purposes of conflagration? He looked at one and at the other,
with a strange fixed stare as he wrote,--not keeping his eyes on the
paper, as Lenny had been taught to do when he sat down to his copy-book.
The fact is, that Randal Leslie was tired and faint, and he felt the
shock of his fall the more, after the few paces he had walked, so that he
was glad to rest himself a few moments; and he took that opportunity to
write a line to Frank, to excuse himself for not calling again, intending
to tear the leaf on which he wrote out of his pocket-book and leave it at
the first cottage he passed, with instructions to take it to the Hall.

While Randal was thus innocently engaged, Lenny came up to him, with the
firm and measured pace of one who has resolved, cost what it may, to do
his duty. And as Lenny, though brave, was not ferocious, so the anger he
felt and the suspicions he entertained only exhibited themselves in the
following solemn appeal to the offender's sense of propriety,--"Ben't you
ashamed of yourself? Sitting on the squire's new stocks! Do get up, and
go along with you!"

Randal turned round sharply; and though, at any other moment, he would
have had sense enough to extricate himself very easily from his false
position, yet /Nemo mortalium, etc/. No one is always wise. And Randal
was in an exceedingly bad humour. The affability towards his inferiors,
for which I lately praised him, was entirely lost in the contempt for
impertinent snobs natural to an insulted Etonian.

Therefore, eying Lenny with great disdain, Randal answered briefly,--

"You are an insolent young blackguard."