under officials.--Yours truly,
AMELIA, COUNTESS OF DERWENTWATER."

Their lordships left the case to very minor officials, indeed; namely
to a person whom the countess describes as "a dusky little man" and
his underlings, and they without hesitation ejected her from Dilstone
Hall. The lady was very indignant, but was very far from being beaten,
and she and her adherents immediately formed a roadside encampment,
under a hedge, in gipsy fashion, and resolved to re-enter if possible.
From her letters it appears that she was very cold and very miserable,
and, moreover, very hungry at first. But the neighbouring peasantry
were kind, and brought her so much food eventually, that she tells one
of her friends that cases of tinned meats from Paris would be of no
use to her. The worst of the encampment seems to have been that it
interfered with her usual pastime of sketching, which could not be
carried on in the evenings under a tarpaulin, by the light of a
lantern.

But her enemies had no idea that she should be permitted to remain
under the hedge any more than in the hall itself. On the 21st of
October, at the quarter sessions for the county of Northumberland, the
chief constable was questioned by the magistrates about the strange
state of affairs in the district, and reported that the encampment was
a little way from the highway, and that, therefore, the lady could not
be apprehended under the Vagrant Act! A summons, however, had been
taken out by the local surveyor, and would be followed by a warrant.
On that summons the so-called countess was convicted; but appealed to
the Court of Queen's Bench.

During the winter the encampment could not be maintained, and the
weather, more powerful than the Greenwich commissioners, drove the
countess from the roadside. But in the bright days of May she
reappeared to resume the fight, and this time took possession of a
cottage at Dilston, whence, says a newspaper report of the period, "it
is expected she will be ejected; but she may do as she did before, and
pitch her tent on the high-road." On the 30th of the same month, the
conviction by the Northumberland magistrates "for erecting a hut on
the roadside," was affirmed by the Court of Queen's Bench.

On the 17th November, 1869, while Mr. Grey was collecting the
Derwentwater rents, the countess marched into the apartment, at the
head of her attendants, to forbid the proceedings. She was richly
apparelled,