WHILE these rare doings were going on at the Yorkshire Stingo, you may easily suppose Gray and his fellows were not over easy in their minds. Little had the wiseacres thought, when they were hand in glove with Dick and his crew, during the grand racket about the old lady (rest her soul), and were breaking down John's enclosures to let them into the house, that these worthies would so soon be doing their best to elbow them out in return. But now they began to have an inkling of that matter, and Gray, poor old noodle, who had once offered the long odds that he would break Dick's sconce any day in the twinkling of a walking-stick, came to be of opinion this was not so easy a feat. Since the business of the sash windows, he saw plainly that Dick was not a fellow to be trifled with; that he had a pestilent long memory for old promises; and that even if he did succeed for once in kicking him out of the yard, ten to one but he would meet him there again the next day, with a plaster over his crown, and seemingly never the worse. So, although he could willingly have given him a dose of ratsbane, he thought it better to put a fair face on the matter for a time, in hopes

OL. XXXVI. NO. CCXXVI.

he might catch Dick tripping some day, and be able, with the assistance of Dragon, to turn him neck and heels out of the house. But things were brought to a pass somewhat sooner than had been expected, in consequence of one of Buckram's crotchets, as ye shall hear.

John had long had a village-schoolmaster on his estate, a very respectable man, and a relation of Martin's; Martin and he were always together, and much good they did among the tenantry. The schoolmaster taught his scholars reading out of the Bible, arithmetic out of the book of Numbers, and generally flogged them to a psalm tune; so that, on the whole, a well-behaved, orderly set of fellows they were; who feared God and honoured the king, loved their landlord John, worked hard, and grumbled little. But Buckram, who knew there could be no fishing except in troubled waters, determined to raise the waters; so, as the shortest way of gaining his end, he one night got the schoolmaster, who had a high opinion of his learning, into his own room after dark, and plied him, as he was well able to do, with strong liquors and hard words, till what between gin and geology, ale and algebra, rum and religion, he so bothered his

U

brains, that the man was never himself again. From that moment Buckram had him under his thumb: he began to get a deboshed look and carbuncled nose; he was seen of an evening with Carlile, and Taylor the devil's chaplain; if you called for him at the school, you were sure to be told he was abroad, and where was this, think ye, but at the Free and Easy, where he and Buckram had set up a catch club under the pretext of diffusing knowledge among the vulgar. And a precious free-andeasy rakehelly concern it seemed to be; you might say, sing, swear, swill, or smoke what you liked -'twas liberty-hall in that respect; but over the chimneypiece was this regulation, written in Buckram's broad fist, with a burnt cork. "No religious conversation allowed here on any account whatsomever. Any member not complying with the above rule to forfeit twopence." A fine school, you will say, this was for the schoolmaster. As for teaching from the Bible after this, 'twas a thing he would not hear of. "Ods bottoms," quoth he, "do you think all my scholars go to Martin's old rickety church? Haven't I Dan's son, and Jack's brother, and Levi the Jew's nephew, besides some half dozen Gentiles that are of no religion at all? No, no! no traps for tender consciences in my school. Teach 'em all alike out of the Times; that suits all tastes. Father Abraham's no authority with us, I can tell youand as for St Paul, why-we'll talk of that anon!"

The upshot of this was, that, in a little while, most of the young men of the neighbourhood were in a fair way to the devil. More orchards and hen-roosts were robbed in a month than had formerly been pillaged in a year; bastards became as plenty as blackberries; Bibles were sold for blue ruin; the only use they made of reading or writing was to enable them to forge a bill or counterfeit a bank note; and nothing would go down but debating societies and pothouse clubs, where the workmen met daily to damn their masters, and drink, as they said, to the confusion of useful knowledge. This had served its turn admirably while Buckram and his friends were trying to turn John's house inside out, and

so for a time Buckram and Gray and Allsop would laud and magnify these greasy villains, and tell them they were the very salt of the earth, and that they must stick together and fear nothing, and so on. But now when they had got themselves snug, as they thought, and began to long for a little peace and quietness, by way of a change, these meetings and spoutings began to be less pleasant, more especially when they happened to come in for their share of any abuse that was going. It was still worse when the fellows, who, from always meeting together, began to discover their own strength, took it into their heads they would have more money for less work, and determined to strike, as they said, for a rise of wages. Of these the tailors were the fiercest, for they formed themselves into a marching regiment, which they called the Devil's Own, met at the Goose and Shears, began to practise the manual and platoon exercise, paraded the streets of the county town, with a Sans Culotte banner; and not only would not work a stitch themselves, but if any body offered to do a job for his master, 'twas odds but he got his head combed down with an oaken towel, or his eyes anointed with sulphuric acid incontinently. Every thing was fairly at a stand; no work to be had for love or money. This Buckram himself began to learn to his cost, for, happening to want a new coat, he dropped in upon his old friend Cabbage at the Cross, and told him he must have a new coat forthwith, for the old one had been too often turned, and he wanted one consumedly. "Lord love ye, Master Buckram," said Cabbage, "I could not make a coat for ye at this moment, if you were my father. I think there be the devil among the tailors for my part;-not a stitch to be had under five shillings a-dayand all along of your unchristian clubs, and pagan meetings in alehouses. What's to come of it I know not-but as to your coat, why, you must just turn it once more-'twill never be noticed." Just at that moment in came Allsop, his buckskin breeches all besmeared with dirt beyond redemption, having got an ugly fall, as he said, in a turn-up with Tipperary Dick, whom he had called

a fellow feeling in the matter, proposed that John should give up the custom of flogging his under servants now and then, as was his wont, Gray and his friend Hoby, though they had cried out against it as a most heathenish Mahometan cruelty till they got into place, both got up and swore the world could not go round on its hinges if John did not flourish his horse-whip occasionally, and that the exercise did his constitution a deal of good. Poor Moses, the old clothesman, whom they had at one time encouraged to roar and bellow for his rights, as he called them, with the other vagabonds, having been decoyed into the servants' hall by one Grunt, who pretended to be his friend, they shewed him up stairs to the upper servants' room, with a great appearance of civility; but when he had got there, they allowed the upper servants to spit on his beard, clap a ham under his nose, and turn him out of the premises amidst the laughter of the whole bevy. Not much better was their treatment of Obadiah, who had wrought them such good service in the matter of Quashie, and on many other occasions. Obadiah came posting up one day to the house all the way

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from the north country, thinking that he had nothing to do now but ask and have, and that both Jack's and Martin's tithes, which were what he had been all along driving at, were at his service. He was quite surprised, when he came in, that Gray did not shake him by the hand as usual; and Buckram, though 'twas but a week before that they had met at the Free and Easy, fairly turned his back upon him, and pretended not to know him. No, no," said Gray, after hearing him out, "as to marrying and burying, do as ye will; but as to meddling with Martin's tithes, no one shall touch the hem of his surplice with my will." And Buckram, who by this time had mustered up brass enough to look his old friend in the face, fairly told him he thought Martin was worth a dozen of him, and that but for Martin, the country would be overrun with canting hypocritical fieldpreachers, or cut-throat fellows, who neither feared God nor devil; and between the two, Obadiah fairly found himself hustled out of the door-his lank candlegrease locks absolutely standing on end with consternation at the sudden turn which matters had taken.

BUT it is time to tell ye something now of Allsop's tricks. Every body had thought him, as he was, a perilous fool all along, but at first folk gave him the credit for being an honest ass, who never saw his way till he ran his head against the post. "No great headpiece," they would say, "Master Allsop, but an honest fellow enough, as times go." And so, for a time, if Master Allsop had chosen to say the moon was made of green cheese, he would have found some that were ready to swear it upon his word. But the truth was, a more shuffling knave was rarely to be met with, particularly since he began to consort with that Papist fellow Dan, of whom ye have heard something before, and will hear more hereafter, who taught him the doctrine of mental reservation, with

other jesuitical tricks. From that time it was impossible to trust a word he said, or almost to get a plain answer to a question. If you asked him what he intended to do about the sash windows, he would say with a grave look, That shall be as God pleases: If you thought you had him fast by asking him, what's o'clock? he would answer it depended upon circumstances: If he learned that any thing was brewing, he would send for you to his room, treat you to a glass of the best, tell you a thousand plans he had for putting John's matters in better order; and just beg you to give him a little time to set all right. Then, when he had gained his end, he would rise up in the servants' hall, and swear he had forgotten every thing about it, or try to cram down your throat that you

must have been in liquor at the time, and had misunderstood him. The truth was, he took care not to be understood, for he would talk such a roundabout incomprehensible jargon, that he had always some back door to shuffle out by, when taken to task for what he had said.

Then another famous trick in which he excelled, was in handling the pea and thimble. He would decoy you into his room, Buckram acting as his confederate, on pretence of holding the stakes, and then say, " I'll lay you a tester,now, you don't tell under which thimble the pea is ;" and if you were rash enough to take the bet, so cleverly did he shift and manœuvre, that, watch him as you would, for the soul of you, you never could get sight of the pea, or the colour of your money again. But with all his twistings, and turnings, and sleight of hand, his tricks began to be pretty well smoked among the servants, till at last they gave him the nickname of Honest Allsop, because they all knew him to be a most unparalleled knave.

Indeed, he began to be so notorious for his double-dealing, that the under servants, though not over nice of late, could not help occasionally letting him know their mind a little, especially after the turn-up with Tipperary Dick, whom he tried to kick when down, but who got up again, and made Allsop go on his marrowbones before all the servants. But Allsop hit on an exquisite device for keeping the fellows quiet, at John's expense, without which, indeed, he could not have kept the head of the table in the hall for a fortnight. Whenever any one proposed some plaguy alteration about the house, or reminded him of some old promise which he was not inclined to perform, his way of stopping their mouths was this:-He would order an enquiry into something else, and send five or six of the fellows who grumbled loudest, into a room by themselves, with plenty of the best from John's larder and cellar, tell ing them they need be in no hurry, but enjoy themselves, and make up their report on the subject at their leisure. Thus, in one room you would find half a dozen fellows nod

ding over as many pots of porter, who would tell you they were over

whelmed with the fatigue of making out a list of the candle-ends used in the house, and separating the wax lights from the tallow. In another, you would drop in upon the like number, as merry as crickets, at Beggar my Neighbour, but all the while pretending to be very busy making up a return of John's dirty linen, distinguishing the shirts which had been worn one day from those which had been worn two, and so forth. There was one party set to gossip over John's workhouse; and another, his Justice of Peace Court. Nay, Allsop went the length of sending a pack of his hungry hangers on on a roving commission all over the county, telling them to knock at every man's door with his compliments, and ask him for a look of his title-deeds, which some were foolish enough to shew them, though others more wisely slapped the door in the vagrants' faces. And when all this would not do to quiet them, he would think nothing of appointing another set of fellows to watch the first; the former to do nothing, to wit, and the latter to help them.

You will ask how he contrived to make John swallow all this, and truly I can hardly help laughing to think of it, though 'twas no laughing matter to the poor squire. If John, as he sometimes did, began to grumble and hesitate a little when Allsop told him to put his name to any paper he brought with him, "O, very well, Master Bull," he would say, "tis no matter-I'll leave it with you for a moment just to look it over and think about it." So knowing, that of all things in the world, John hated quack medicines, down he would run to Buckram's room, who constantly kept a large store of them, which he distributed gratis-take out some half-adozen boxes and phials, and brandishing a syringe, and accompanied by Buckram, who had a monstrous fancy for seeing a man take physic, step up stairs with them to John's room. There he would spread them before him on the table, duly ticketed and labelled, in this fashion: "Cartwright's Annual Pills-none are genuine," &c.; "Dan's Poor Irishman's Friend one dose is enough;" "Hum's Universal Mixture-when taken, to be well shaken;" "Groat's Essence of Black Balls-N.B. Poi