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 New-gate 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 me nothing of the kind,' I replied, with equal confidence: 'they
cannot work tail-foremost; and they have no tails to work with.' For I
knew a little about grubs, and the ignorance concerning them, which
we have no right to put up with. However, not to go into that (for the
argument lasted a fortnight; and then was only come so far as to begin
again), Master Ramsack soon convinced me of the things I knew already;
the excellence of Lorna's birth, as well as her lofty place at Court,
and beauty, and wealth, and elegance. But all these only made me sigh,
and wish that I were born to them.

From Master Ramsack I discovered that the nobleman to whose charge Lady
Lorna had been committed, by the Court of Chancery, was Earl Brandir
of Lochawe, her poor mother's uncle. For the Countess of Dugal was
daughter, and only child, of the last Lord Lorne, whose sister had
married Sir Ensor Doone; while he himself had married the sister of
Earl Brandir. This nobleman had a country house near the village of
Kensington; and here his niece dwelled with him, when she was not in
attendance on Her Majesty the Queen, who had taken a liking to her.
Now since the King had begun to attend the celebration of mass, in the
chapel at Whitehall--and not at Westminster Abbey, as our gossips had
averred--he had given order that the doors should be thrown open, so
that all who could make interest to get into the antechamber,