as something
of money, begged him to be quiet at any rate till the fate of the
property should be settled. "And if you'll take my advice, Sir John,
you will not notice him at all. You may be sure that he has not a
shilling in the world, and that he wants you to prosecute him. When
you have got damages against him, he will be off out of the country."

"But I shall have stopped his impudent ribaldry," said Sir John
Ball. Then the lawyer tried to explain to him that no one read the
ribaldry. It was of no use. Sir John read it himself, and that was
enough to make him wretched.

The little fable which made Sir John so unhappy had not, for some
months past, appeared in any of the metropolitan newspapers; but when
the legal inquiry into the proper disposition of Mr Jonathan Ball's
property was over, and when it was known that, as the result of that
inquiry, the will in favour of the Mackenzies was to be set aside and
the remains of the property handed over to Sir John, then that very
influential newspaper, which in the early days of the question had
told the story of the Lion and the Lamb, told it all again, tearing,
indeed, the Littlebath _Christian Examiner_ into shreds for its
iniquity, but speaking of the romantic misfortune of the lamb in
terms which made Sir John Ball very unhappy. The fame which accrued
to him from being so publicly pointed out as a lion, was not fame
of which he was proud. And when the writer in this very influential
newspaper went on to say that the world was now looking for a
termination of this wonderful story, which would make it pleasant to
all parties, he was nearly beside himself in his misery. He, a man
of fifty, of slow habits, with none of the buoyancy of youth left
in him, apt to regard himself as older than his age, who had lived
with his father and mother almost on an equality in regard to habits
of life, the father of a large family, of which the eldest was now
himself a man! Could it be endured that such a one as he should enter
upon matrimony amidst the din of public trumpets and under a halo
of romance? The idea of it was frightful to him. On the very day
on which the result of the legal investigation was officially
communicated to him, he sat in the old study at the Cedars with two
newspapers before him. In one of these there was a description of
his love, which he knew was intended as furtive ridicule, and an
assurance to the public that the lamb's misfortunes would all be
remedi