of their new sovereign. But the noise
of the pistol had alarmed Mrs. Pickle, who, running downstairs, with the
most frantic appearance, attended by two maids and the curate, who still
maintained his place of chaplain and ghostly director in the family,
would have assaulted our hero with her nails, had not she been
restrained by her attendants. Though they prevented her from using her
hands, they could not hinder her from exercising her tongue, which she
wagged against him with all the virulence of malice. She asked, if he
were come to butcher his brother, to insult his father's corpse,
and triumph in her affliction? She bestowed upon him the epithets of
spendthrift, jail-bird, and unnatural ruffian; she begged pardon of God
for having brought such a monster into the world; accused him of having
brought his father's grey hairs with sorrow to the grave; and affirmed,
that were he to touch the body, it would bleed at his approach.

Without pretending to refute the articles of this ridiculous charge, he
allowed her to ring out her alarm; and then calmly replied, that if she
did not quietly retire to her chamber, and behave as became a person
in her present situation, he should insist upon her removing to another
lodging without delay; for he was determined to be master in his own
family. The lady, who, in all probability, expected that he would
endeavour to appease her with all the tenderness of filial submission,
was so much exasperated at his cavalier behaviour, that her constitution
could not support the transports of her spirits; and she was carried off
by her women in a fit, while the officious clergyman was dismissed after
his pupil, with all the circumstances of disgrace.

Our hero having thus made his quarters good, took possession of the best
apartment in the house, and sent notice of his arrival to Mr. Clover,
who, with his wife, visited him in less than an hour, and was not a
little surprised to find him so suddenly settled in his father's house.
The meeting of Julia and her brother was extremely pathetic. She had
always loved him with uncommon tenderness, and looked upon him as the
ornament of her family; but she had heard of his extravagances with
regret, and though she considered the stories that were circulated
at his expense, as the malicious exaggerations of his mother and her
darling son, her apprehension had been grievously alarmed by an account
of his imprisonment and distress, which had been accidentall