ed here, they did.
Post-chaises: come down in style. Didn't they, Chunt?" The landlord
nodded in confirmation. "Just got away in time. Pity, though. He'd
have been a bonny man if it hadn't been for his disappointment, and
those iron shares. It was on account of his being director, and
answerable for a good deal, I suppose, that the bailiffs wanted him."

A week passed, and then Chunt, who had been waiting to have a good full
audience, brought out a large auctioneer's posting bill, and laid it
before his customers as a surprise.

"What d'yer think of that, gentlemen, eh?" he said. "Merland will be
another place soon. There's poor old Gurdon and poor old Barker both
dead within the last four-and-twenty hours, and now that's been sent to
me to stick up in the bar. Read it out, Mr Mouncey."

The baker put on his spectacles, and read aloud the list of the "elegant
and superior household furniture and effects, to be sold by auction,
without reserve, at Merland Rectory, by direction of the Reverend Henry
Elstree, who was leaving the place."

"Chunt's about right," said Huttoft, the saddler: "the place won't be
the same, soon. The old people at the Rectory ain't looked the same,
since I saw them coming back that day from the Hall--the day after Lady
Gernon elop--disappeared."

"Well, gentlemen," said the landlord, "I believe I'm as sorry as any one
present; but it's no use to fret for other folks' troubles. I propose
that we have glasses round of brandy hot, gentlemen, for I feel quite
sinking."

"Do you pay, Chunt?" said Mouncey, jocosely.

"There ain't a man present as would be more free, gentlemen," said the
landlord, "if I could; but, I put it to the company, with the present
fall off in my trade, am I able?"

"No--no!" was chorused; and, the glasses being filled, Jonathan Chunt
proposed a toast which was drunk with acclamation, and the landlord's
toast was:

"Gentlemen, here's to happier times!"

End of Book I.

Book 2, Chapter I.

AFTER TWENTY YEARS.

"You dog! you confounded lubber! Drive on, or you'll have them out of
sight!" shouted a frank, opened-faced young fellow of some three or four
and twenty, as he leaned out of the front window of a post-chaise, and
urged his post-boy to increase of speed.

"An' how can I get another mile an hour out on such bastes, yer honner?"
said the post-boy in answer. "The crayture I'm riding takes no more
heed of the spur than the grate baste the levvyath