es."

Once he disappeared for a time, and made his way to London, where he
lodged obscurely in the neighbourhood of Muswell Hill. Here he
surrounded himself with grooms and ostlers, and other low company of
both sexes, abandoning himself to orgies of debauchery. Among his milder
eccentricities he would, we are told, mix mud with his beer, and drain
tankard after tankard of the nauseating mixture. He drank his coffee
from the spout of the coffee-pot, and wandered about, a grotesque
figure, with one side of his face clean-shaven.

But even then he had sane moments, when the raving madman of yesterday
became the courteous, polite, shrewd man of to-day, charming all by his
wit and high-bred geniality. It was, of course, inevitable that a career
such as this, marked by a madness which grew daily, should lead sooner
or later to tragedy. And tragedy was coming swiftly. It came early in
the year 1760, before Lord Ferrers had reached his fortieth birthday.
And this is how it came.

The Court of Chancery had ordered that his lordship's rents should be
received and accounted for by a receiver, who, by way of concession to
his feelings, was to be appointed by himself. The Earl, who rarely
lacked shrewdness, looked round for the most suitable person to fill
this delicate post--for a man who should be as clay in his hands; and
such a "tool" he thought he had found in his steward, Mr John Johnson,
who had known him since boyhood, and who had never thwarted him even in
his maddest caprices. Mr Johnson was duly appointed receiver; but the
Earl's self-congratulation was short-lived. The steward proved that he
was possessed of a conscience, and that neither cajolery nor threats
could make him swerve from the straight path of honesty.

In vain the Earl coaxed and blustered and bullied. The receiver was
adamant. He had a duty to perform, and at any cost he would discharge
it. His lordship's rage at such unlooked-for recalcitrancy was
unbounded. He began to hate the too honest steward with a murderous
hatred; behind his back he loaded him with abuse, and vowed that, of all
his enemies, the steward was the most virulent and implicable. But while
the Earl was nursing this diabolical hatred, he showed little sign of it
to Johnson, who was so unsuspectingly walking to meet tragedy.

One January day, in 1760, Lord Ferrers sent a polite message to his
steward to come to Staunton Harold on an urgent matter of business. It
was on a Friday; and