n it?
Captain Moordocks, coom ye home arly. T' hare sha' be doon to a toorn be
fi' o'clock. Coom ye home be that o'clock, if ye care for deener."

"I must have made a tender impression on her heart," Mr. Mordacks said
to himself, as he kissed his hand to the capacious hostess. "Such is
my fortune, to be loved by everybody, while aiming at the sternest
rectitude. It is sweet, it is dangerously sweet; but what a comfort! How
that large-hearted female will baste my hare!"

CHAPTER XLIII

A PLEASANT INTERVIEW

Cumbered as he was of body, and burdened with some cares of mind, the
general factor ploughed his way with his usual resolution. A scowl of
dark vapor came over the headlands, and under-ran the solid snow-clouds
with a scud, like bonfire smoke. The keen wind following the curves of
land, and shaking the fringe of every white-clad bush, piped (like a
boy through a comb) wherever stock or stub divided it. It turned all
the coat of the horse the wrong way, and frizzed up the hair of Mr.
Mordacks, which was as short as a soldier's, and tossed up his heavy
riding cape, and got into him all up the small of his back. Being fond
of strong language, he indulged in much; but none of it warmed him, and
the wind whistled over his shoulders, and whirled the words out of his
mouth.

When he came to the dip of the road, where it crosses the Dane's
Dike, he pulled up his horse for a minute, in the shelter of shivering
fir-trees. "What a cursed bleak country! My fish is frozen stiff, and my
legs are as dead as the mutton in the saddle-bags. Geoffrey, you are a
fool," he said. "Charity is very fine, and business even better; but a
good coal fire is the best of all. But in for a penny of it, in for a
pound. Hark! I hear some fellow-fool equally determined to be frozen.
I'll go at once and hail him; perhaps the sight of him will warm me."

He turned his horse down a little lane upon the left, where snow lay
deep, with laden bushes overhanging it, and a rill of water bridged
with bearded ice ran dark in the hedge-trough. And here he found a
stout lusty man, with shining red cheeks and keen blue eyes, hacking and
hewing in a mighty maze of brambles.

"My friend, you seem busy. I admire your vast industry," Mr. Mordacks
exclaimed, as the man looked at him, but ceased not from swinging his
long hedge-hook. "Happy is the land that owns such men."

"The land dothn't own me; I own the land. I shall be pleased to learn
what your