to, most emphatically, by the sovereign of the
gentler sex, had cut off the euphonious utterance of one of the choicest
paraphrases of Sternhold and Hopkins in the middle; and by bruising the
scull of the reformed and reforming sheriff, had nearly rendered a new
election necessary to the repose and well-being of the county in which
they lived.

But the worthy convert recovered, to the sore discomfiture of his
spouse, and to the comfort and rejoicing of all true believers. The
breach in his head was healed, but that which separated his family
remained the same--

"As rocks that had been rent asunder."

They knew the fellowship of man and wife only in so much as was
absolutely essential to the keeping up of appearances to the public
eye--a matter necessary to maintaining her lord in the possession of his
dignity; which, as it conferred honor and profit, through him, upon her
also, it was of necessity a part of her policy to continue.

There had been a brush--a small gust had passed over that fair region of
domestic harmony--on the very morning upon which the outlaw and his
party rode up the untrimmed and half-overgrown avenue, which led to the
house of the writ-server. There had been an amiable discussion between
the two, as to which of them, with propriety, belonged the duty of
putting on the breeches of their son Tommy, preparatory to his making
his appearance at the breakfast-table. Some extraneous influence had
that morning prompted the sheriff to resist the performance of a task
which had now for some time been imposed upon him, and for which,
therefore, there was the sanction of prescription and usage. It was an
unlucky moment for the assertion of his manhood: for, a series of
circumstances operating just about that time unfavorably upon the mind
of his wife, she was in the worst possible humor upon which to try
experiments.

She heard the refusal of her liege to do the required duty, therefore,
with an astonishment, not unmingled with a degree of pleasure, as it
gave a full excuse for the venting forth upon him of those splenetic
humors, which, for some time, had been growing and gathering in her
system. The little sheriff, from long attendance on _courts_ and
_camps_, had acquired something more, perhaps, of the desire and
disposition, than the capacity, to make long speeches and longer
sermons, in the performance of both of which labors, however, he was
admirably fortified by the technicals of the law, a