"Halt there, my men--lads and lasses too--there, halt a bit. Mrs.
Fairfield, do you hear?--halt! I think his reverence has given us a
capital sermon. Go up to the Great House all of you, and drink a glass
to his health. Frank, go with them; and tell Spruce to tap one of the
casks kept for the hay-makers. Harry, [this in whisper,] catch the
Parson, and tell him to come to me instantly."

"My dear Hazeldean, what has happened? you are mad."

"Don't bother--do what I tell you."

"But where is the Parson to find you?"

"Where, gad zooks, Mrs. H.--at the stocks to be sure!"

CHAPTER XI.

Dr. Riccabocca, awakened out of his reverie by the sound of footsteps,
was still so little sensible of the indignity of his position, that he
enjoyed exceedingly, and with all the malice of his natural humor, the
astonishment and stupor manifested by Stirn, when that functionary
beheld the extraordinary substitute which fate and philosophy had found
for Lenny Fairfield. Instead of the weeping, crushed, broken-hearted
captive whom he had reluctantly come to deliver, he stared, speechless
and aghast, upon the grotesque but tranquil figure of the Doctor,
enjoying his pipe and cooling himself under his umbrella, with a
_sang-froid_ that was truly appalling and diabolical. Indeed,
considering that Stirn always suspected the Papisher of having had a
hand in the whole of that black and midnight business, in which the
stocks had been broken, bunged up, and consigned to perdition, and that
the Papisher had the evil reputation of dabbling in the Black Art, the
hocus-pocus way in which the Lenny he had incarcerated was transformed
into the Doctor he found, conjoined with the peculiarly strange,
eldritch, and Mephistophelean physiognomy and person of Riccabocca,
could not but strike a thrill of superstitious dismay into the breast of
the parochial tyrant. While to his first confused and stammered
exclamations and interrogatories, Riccabocca replied with so tragic an
air, such ominous shakes of the head, such mysterious, equivocating,
long-worded sentences, that Stirn every moment felt more and more
convinced that the boy had sold himself to the Powers of Darkness; and
that he himself, prematurely, and in the flesh, stood face to face with
the Arch-Enemy.

Mr. Stirn had not yet recovered his wonted intelligence, which, to do
him justice, was usually prompt enough--when the Squire, followed hard
by the Parson, arrived at the spot. Indeed, Mrs. H