ne asked my testimony. But there is no making a
silken purse out of a sow's ear. I have done a folly for him that I will
never do for another: and that is, to think a Presbyterian would fight
without his preacher's permission. Give them a two hours' sermon,
and let them howl a psalm to a tune that is worse than the cries of a
flogged hound, and the villains will lay on like threshers; but for
a calm, cool, gentleman-like turn upon the sod, hand to hand, in a
neighbourly way, they have not honour enough to undertake it. But enough
of our crop-eared cur of a neighbour.--Sir Jasper, you will tarry with
us to dine, and see how Dame Margaret's kitchen smokes; and after dinner
I will show you a long-winged falcon fly. She is not mine, but the
Countess's, who brought her from London on her fist almost the whole
way, for all the haste she was in, and left her with me to keep the
perch for a season."

This match was soon arranged, and Dame Margaret overheard the good
Knight's resentment mutter itself off, with those feelings with which
we listen to the last growling of the thunderstorm; which, as the black
cloud sinks beneath the hill, at once assures us that there has been
danger, and that the peril is over. She could not, indeed, but marvel in
her own mind at the singular path of reconciliation with his neighbour
which her husband had, with so much confidence, and in the actual
sincerity of his goodwill to Mr. Bridgenorth, attempted to open; and
she blessed God internally that it had not terminated in bloodshed.
But these reflections she locked carefully within her own bosom, well
knowing that they referred to subjects in which the Knight of the Peak
would neither permit his sagacity to be called in question, nor his will
to be controlled.

The progress of the history hath hitherto been slow; but after this
period so little matter worth of mark occurred at Martindale, that we
must hurry over hastily the transactions of several years.

CHAPTER X

_Cleopatra._--Give me to drink mandragora,
That I may sleep away this gap of time.
--Antony and Cleopatra.

There passed, as we hinted at the conclusion of the last chapter, four
or five years after the period we have dilated upon; the events of
which scarcely require to be discussed, so far as our present purpose is
concerned, in as many lines. The Knight and his Lady continued to reside
at their Castle--sh