the
deed, and no one to suspect of it: so they left the matter open, found
her simply "Dead," and troubled their heads no more about the business.

Good Mr. Evans, the vicar, preached her funeral sermon, only as last
Sunday, amplifying the idea that she "was cut off in the midst of her
days:" and thereby encouraging many of the simpler folks, who knew that
Mrs. Quarles had long passed seventy, in the luminous notion that
house-keepers in great establishments are privileged, among other
undoubted perquisites, to live to a hundred and forty, unless cut off by
apoplexy or murder.

Mr. Simon Jennings, as nephew and next of kin, followed the body to its
last home in the capacity of chief mourner; to do him justice, he was a
real mourner, bewailed her loudly, and had never been the same man
since. Moreover, although aforetime not much given to indiscriminate
charity, he had now gained no small credit by distributing his aunt's
wardrobe among the poorer families at Hurstley. It was really very kind
of him, and the more so, as being altogether unexpected: he got great
praise for this, did Mr. Jennings; specially, too, because he had gained
nothing whatever from his aunt's death, though her heir and probable
legatee, and clearly was a disappointed man.

CHAPTER VI.

THE BAILIFF; AND A BITTER TRIAL.

Jennings--Mr. Simon Jennings--for he prided himself much both
on the Mr. and the Simon, was an upright man, a very upright man indeed,
literally so as well as metaphorically. He was not tall certainly, but
what there was of him stood bolt upright. Many fancied that his neck was
possessed of some natural infirmity, or rather firmity, of
unbendableness, some little-to-be-envied property of being a perpetual
stiff-neck; and they were the more countenanced in this theory, from the
fact that, within a few days past, Mr. Jennings had contracted an ugly
knack of carrying his erect head in the comfortless position of peeping
over his left shoulder; not always so, indeed, but often enough to be
remarkable; and then he would occasionally start it straight again, eyes
right, with a nervous twitch, any thing but pleasant to the marvelling
spectator. It was as if he was momentarily expecting to look upon some
vague object that affrighted him, and sometimes really did see it. Mr.
Jennings had consulted high medical authority (as Hurstley judged), to
wit, the Union doctor of last scene, an enterprising practitioner, glib
in theory, a