even
deeper than the rest, and though 'twas his boast that he could carry a
bottle more than any man, and see all his guests under the table, his
last night's bout had left him in ill-humour and boisterous. He strode
about, casting oaths at the dogs and rating the servants, and when he
mounted his big black horse 'twas amid such a clamour of voices and
baying hounds that the place was like Pandemonium.

He was a large man of florid good looks, black eyes, and full habit of
body, and had been much renowned in his youth for his great strength,
which was indeed almost that of a giant, and for his deeds of prowess in
the saddle and at the table when the bottle went round. There were many
evil stories of his roysterings, but it was not his way to think of them
as evil, but rather to his credit as a man of the world, for, when he
heard that they were gossiped about, he greeted the information with a
loud triumphant laugh. He had married, when she was fifteen, the
blooming toast of the county, for whom his passion had long died out,
having indeed departed with the honeymoon, which had been of the
briefest, and afterwards he having borne her a grudge for what he chose
to consider her undutiful conduct. This grudge was founded on the fact
that, though she had presented him each year since their marriage with a
child, after nine years had passed none had yet been sons, and, as he was
bitterly at odds with his next of kin, he considered each of his
offspring an ill turn done him.

He spent but little time in her society, for she was a poor, gentle
creature of no spirit, who found little happiness in her lot, since her
lord treated her with scant civility, and her children one after another
sickened and died in their infancy until but two were left. He scarce
remembered her existence when he did not see her face, and he was
certainly not thinking of her this morning, having other things in view,
and yet it so fell out that, while a groom was shortening a stirrup and
being sworn at for his awkwardness, he by accident cast his eye upward to
a chamber window peering out of the thick ivy on the stone. Doing so he
saw an old woman draw back the curtain and look down upon him as if
searching for him with a purpose.

He uttered an exclamation of anger.

"Damnation! Mother Posset again," he said. "What does she there, old
frump?"

The curtain fell and the woman disappeared, but in a few minutes more an
unheard-of thing happen