empt to laugh it off, "Thank you, I don't think there's
much fear of me turning radical. But will you let me the
cottage?"

"My agent manages all that. We talked about pulling it down. The
cottage is in my preserves, and I don't mean to have some
poaching fellow there to be sneaking out at night after my
pheasants."

"But his grandfather and great-grandfather lived there."

"I dare say, but it's my cottage."

"But surely that gives him a claim to it."

"D-n it! it's my cottage. You're not going to tell me I mayn't do
what I like with it, I suppose."

"I only said that his family having lived there so long gives him
a claim."

"A claim to what? These are some more of your cursed radical
notions. I think they might teach you something better at
Oxford."

Tom was now perfectly cool, but withal in such a tremendous fury
of excitement that he forgot the interests of his client
altogether.

"I came here, sir," he said, very quietly and slowly, "not to
request your advice on my own account, or your opinion on the
studies of Oxford, valuable as no doubt they are; I came to ask
you to let this cottage to me, and I wish to have your answer."

"I'll be d-d if I do; there's my answer."

"Very well," said Tom; "then I have only to wish you good
morning. I am sorry to have wasted a day in the company of a man
who sets up for a country gentleman with the tongue of a Thames
bargee and the heart of a Jew pawn-broker."

Mr. Wurley rushed to the bell and rang it furiously.

"By --!" he almost screamed, shaking his fist at Tom, "I'll have
you horse-whipped out of my house;" and then poured forth a flood
of uncomplimentary slang, ending in another pull at the bell, and
"By --! I'll have you horse-whipped out of my house."

"You had better try it on--you and your flunkeys together," said
Tom, taking a cigar case out of his pocket and lighting up, the
most defiant and exasperating action he could think of on the
spur of the moment. "Here's one of them; so I'll leave you to
give him his orders, and wait five minutes in the hall, where
there's more room." And so, leaving the footman gaping at his
lord, he turned on his heel, with the air of Bernardo del Carpio
after he had bearded King Alphonso, and walked into the hall.

He heard men running to and fro, and doors banging, as he stood
there looking at the old buff-coats, and rather thirsting for a
fight. Presently a door opened, and the portly butler shuffled
in, looking