ens kept to themselves up-stairs.

This was soon noticed and resented, in that age of few books and free
converse. Some said, "Oh, we are not good enough for him!", others
inquired what a half-pay captain had to give himself airs about.
Candor interposed and supplied the climax, "Nay, my masters, the
Captain may be in hiding from duns, or from the runners: now I think
on't, the York mail was robbed scarce a se'nnight before his worship
came a-hiding here."

But the landlady's tongue ran the other way. Her weight was sixteen
stone, her sentiments were her interests, and her tongue her tomahawk.
"'Tis pity," said she, one day, "some folk can't keep their tongues
from blackening of their betters. The Captain is a civil-spoken
gentleman--Lord send there were more of them in these parts!--as takes
his hat off to me whenever he meets me, and pays his reckoning weekly.
If he has a mind to be private, what business is that of yours, or
ours? But curs must bark at their betters."

Detraction, thus roughly quelled for certain seconds, revived at
intervals whenever Dame Gust's broad back was turned. It was mildly
encountered one evening by Gardiner, "Nay, good sirs," said he, "you
mistake the worthy Captain. To have fought at Blenheim and Malplaquet,
no man has less vanity. 'Tis for his son he holds aloof. He guards
the youth like a mother, and will not have him to hear our tap-room
jests. He worships the boy--a sullen lout, sirs; but paternal love is
blind. He told me once he had loved his wife dearly, and lost her
young, and this was all he had of her. 'And,' said he, 'I'd spill
blood like water for him, my own the first.'--'Then, sir,' says I, 'I
fear he will give you a sore heart one day.'--'And welcome,' says my
Captain, and his face like iron."

Somebody remarked that no man keeps out of company who is good company;
but Mr. Gardiner parried that dogma. "When young master is abed, my
neighbor does sometimes invite me to share a bottle; and a sprightlier
companion I would not desire. Such stories of battles, and duels, and
love intrigues!"

"Now there's an old fox for you," said one, approvingly, It reconciled
him to the Captain's decency to find that it was only hypocrisy.

"I like not--a man--who wears--a mask," hiccoughed a hitherto silent
personage, revealing his clandestine drunkenness and unsuspected wisdom
at one blow.

These various theories were still fermenting in the bosom of the
"Swan," when o