me was
Ramsack), having to make robes for peers, and cloaks for their wives and
otherwise, knew the great folk, sham or real, as well as he knew a fox
or skunk from a wolverine skin.

And when, with some fencing and foils of inquiry, I hinted about Lady
Lorna Dugal, the old man's face became so pleasant that I knew her birth
must be wondrous high. At this my own countenance fell, I suppose,--for
the better she was born, the harder she would be to marry--and mistaking
my object, he took me up:--

"Perhaps you think, Master Ridd, that because her ladyship, Lady Lorna
Dugal, is of Scottish origin, therefore her birth is not as high as of
our English nobility. If you think so you are wrong, sir. She comes
not of the sandy Scotch race, with high cheek-bones, and raw
shoulder-blades, who set up pillars in their courtyards. But she comes
of the very best Scotch blood, descended from the Norsemen. Her mother
was of the very noblest race, the Lords of Lorne; higher even than the
great Argyle, who has lately made a sad mistake, and paid for it most
sadly. And her father was descended from the King Dugal, who fought
against Alexander the Great. No, no, Master Ridd; none of your
promiscuous blood, such as runs in the veins of half our modern
peerage."

"Why should you trouble yourself about it, Master Ramsack?" I replied:
"let them all go their own ways: and let us all look up to them, whether
they come by hook or crook."

"Not at all, not at all, my lad. That is not the way to regard it. We
look up at the well-born men, and side-ways at the base-born."

"Then we are all base-born ourselves. I will look up to no man, except
for what himself has done."

"Come, Master Ridd, you might be lashed from Newgate to Tyburn and back
again, once a week, for a twelvemonth, if some people heard you. Keep
your tongue more close, young man; or here you lodge no longer; albeit
I love your company, which smells to me of the hayfield. Ah, I have not
seen a hayfield for nine-and-twenty years, John Ridd. The cursed moths
keep me at home, every day of the summer."

"Spread your furs on the haycocks," I answered very boldly: "the indoor
moth cannot abide the presence of the outdoor ones."

"Is it so?" he answered: "I never thought of that before. And yet I
have known such strange things happen in the way of fur, that I can
well believe it. If you only knew, John, the way in which they lay their
eggs, and how they work tail-foremost--"

"Tell