any particular object."

"This is what I call coming to the point," said Mr. Touchwood, thrusting
out his stout legs, accoutred as they were with the ancient defences,
called boot-hose, so as to rest his heels upon the fender. "Upon my
life, the fire turns the best flower in the garden at this season of the
year--I'll take the freedom to throw on a log.--Is it not a strange
thing, by the by, that one never sees a fagot in Scotland? You have much
small wood, Mr. Mowbray, I wonder you do not get some fellow from the
midland counties, to teach your people how to make a fagot."

"Did you come all the way to Shaws-Castle," asked Mowbray, rather
testily, "to instruct me in the mystery of fagot-making?"

"Not exactly--not exactly," answered the undaunted Touchwood; "but there
is a right and a wrong way in every thing--a word by the way, on any
useful subject, can never fall amiss.--As for my immediate and more
pressing business, I can assure you, that it is of a nature sufficiently
urgent, since it brings me to a house in which I am much surprised to
find myself."

"The surprise is mutual, sir," said Mowbray, gravely, observing that his
guest made a pause; "it is full time you should explain it."

"Well, then," replied Touchwood; "I must first ask you whether you have
never heard of a certain old gentleman, called Scrogie, who took it into
what he called his head, poor man, to be ashamed of the name he bore,
though owned by many honest and respectable men, and chose to join it to
your surname of Mowbray, as having a more chivalrous Norman sounding,
and, in a word, a gentlemanlike twang with it?"

"I have heard of such a person, though only lately," said Mowbray.
"Reginald Scrogie Mowbray was his name. I have reason to consider his
alliance with my family as undoubted, though you seem to mention it with
a sneer, sir. I believe Mr. S. Mowbray regulated his family settlements
very much upon the idea that his heir was to intermarry with our house."

"True, true, Mr. Mowbray," answered Touchwood; "and certainly it is not
your business to lay the axe to the root of the genealogical tree, that
is like to bear golden apples for you--Ha!"

"Well, well, sir--proceed--proceed," answered Mowbray.

"You may also have heard that this old gentleman had a son, who would
willingly have cut up the said family-tree into fagots; who thought
Scrogie sounded as well as Mowbray, and had no fancy for an imaginary
gentility, which was to be