threatening to set his wig on fire, and constantly begging his
pardon with great awkwardness and embarrassment--John led the party to
the best bedroom, which was nearly as large as the chamber from which
they had come, and held, drawn out near the fire for warmth, a great old
spectral bedstead, hung with faded brocade, and ornamented, at the top
of each carved post, with a plume of feathers that had once been white,
but with dust and age had now grown hearse-like and funereal.

'Good night, my friends,' said Mr Chester with a sweet smile, seating
himself, when he had surveyed the room from end to end, in the
easy-chair which his attendants wheeled before the fire. 'Good night!
Barnaby, my good fellow, you say some prayers before you go to bed, I
hope?'

Barnaby nodded. 'He has some nonsense that he calls his prayers, sir,'
returned old John, officiously. 'I'm afraid there an't much good in em.'

'And Hugh?' said Mr Chester, turning to him.

'Not I,' he answered. 'I know his'--pointing to Barnaby--'they're well
enough. He sings 'em sometimes in the straw. I listen.'

'He's quite a animal, sir,' John whispered in his ear with dignity.
'You'll excuse him, I'm sure. If he has any soul at all, sir, it must be
such a very small one, that it don't signify what he does or doesn't in
that way. Good night, sir!'

The guest rejoined 'God bless you!' with a fervour that was quite
affecting; and John, beckoning his guards to go before, bowed himself
out of the room, and left him to his rest in the Maypole's ancient bed.

Chapter 13

If Joseph Willet, the denounced and proscribed of 'prentices, had
happened to be at home when his father's courtly guest presented himself
before the Maypole door--that is, if it had not perversely chanced to be
one of the half-dozen days in the whole year on which he was at liberty
to absent himself for as many hours without question or reproach--he
would have contrived, by hook or crook, to dive to the very bottom of Mr
Chester's mystery, and to come at his purpose with as much certainty as
though he had been his confidential adviser. In that fortunate case, the
lovers would have had quick warning of the ills that threatened them,
and the aid of various timely and wise suggestions to boot; for all
Joe's readiness of thought and action, and all his sympathies and good
wishes, were enlisted in favour of the young people, and were staunch in
devotion to their cause. Whether this disposition