for it with solicitation.

Miss Bertram was in the breakfast-parlour when Sampson shuffled in, his
face all radiant with smiles--a circumstance so uncommon that Lucy's
first idea was that somebody had been bantering him with an imposition,
which had thrown him into this ecstasy. Having sate for some time rolling
his eyes and gaping with his mouth like the great wooden head at Merlin's
exhibition, he at length began--'And what do you think of him, Miss
Lucy?'

'Think of whom, Mr. Sampson?' asked the young lady.

'Of Har--no--of him that you know about?' again demanded the Dominie.

'That I know about?' replied Lucy, totally at a loss to comprehend his
meaning.

'Yes, the stranger, you know, that came last evening, in the post
vehicle; he who shot young Hazelwood, ha, ha, ha!' burst forth the
Dominie, with a laugh that sounded like neighing.

'Indeed, Mr. Sampson,' said his pupil, 'you have chosen a strange subject
for mirth; I think nothing about the man, only I hope the outrage was
accidental, and that we need not fear a repetition of it.'

'Accidental! ha, ha, ha!' again whinnied Sampson.

'Really, Mr. Sampson,' said Lucy, somewhat piqued, 'you are unusually gay
this morning.'

'Yes, of a surety I am! ha, ha, ho! face-ti-ous, ho, ho, ha!'

'So unusually facetious, my dear sir,' pursued the young lady, 'that I
would wish rather to know the meaning of your mirth than to be amused
with its effects only.'

'You shall know it, Miss Lucy,' replied poor Abel. 'Do you remember your
brother?'

'Good God, how can you ask me? No one knows better than you he was lost
the very day I was born.'

'Very true, very true,' answered the Dominie, saddening at the
recollection; 'I was strangely oblivious; ay, ay! too true. But you
remember your worthy father?'

'How should you doubt it, Mr. Sampson? it is not so many weeks since--'

'True, true; ay, too true,' replied the Dominie, his Houyhnhnm laugh
sinking into a hysterical giggle. 'I will be facetious no more under
these remembrances; but look at that young man!'

Bertram at this instant entered the room. 'Yes, look at him well, he is
your father's living image; and as God has deprived you of your dear
parents--O, my children, love one another!'

'It is indeed my father's face and form,' said Lucy, turning very pale.
Bertram ran to support her, the Dominie to fetch water to throw upon her
face (which in his haste he took from the boiling tea-urn), when
fortunately