He was at his wits’ end, although you must be clever if you can perceive the wits’ end of a punster.

“That’s Morning Star,” said he.  “Now do you know why I call her Morning Star?”

I answered truthfully I did not.

“Why,” he said, with a merry laugh, “because she’s a roarer.”

“What a pity!” I exclaimed.  “But I don’t wonder at it if she has to carry you and your jokes very far.”

He took it in good part, and we had a pleasant evening at the Hall.  He discharged a good many other puns, which I am glad to say I have forgotten.  But there was a man present who was a good story-teller.  Some I had heard before, but they were none the less welcome, while one or two I related were as good as new to my host and old Squire Fullerton, who had once been High Sheriff, and was supposed to know all about circuit business.  He prefaced almost everything he said with, “When I was High Sheriff,” so I asked him innocently enough how many times he had been High Sheriff, on which my host, being a quick-witted man, looked at him with a broad grin, while he balanced the nutcrackers on his forefinger.

“Well,” said Fullerton, “it was in Parke’s time.”

“Yes; but which of them?” I asked.  “Are you alluding to Sir Alan?  They did not both come together, surely.”

“Now, lookee, Fullerton,” said my old friend, tapping the mahogany with the nutcrackers, as though he was about to say something remarkably clever; “one of ’em, Jemmy, had a kind of a cast in one of his eyes—­didn’t he, Judge?”

“Yes,” said I; “but their names were not spelt alike.”

“No, no!” cried the squire; “I’m coming to that.  One eye was a little troublesome at times, I believe—­at least they said so in my time when I was High Sheriff—­and that made him a little ill-tempered at times.  Now, that Judge’s name was spelt P-a-r-k-e” (tapping every letter with his nutcrackers), “so the Bar used to call him ’Parke with an “e";’ and what do you think they used to call the other, whose name was Park?—­Come, now, Judge, you can guess that.”

I suppose I shook my head, for he said, “Why, you told me the story yourself four years ago—­ah! it must be five years ago—­at this very table, when old Squire Hawley had laid two thousand on Jannette for the Leger.  ‘This is it,’ said you; ’they call one of them Parke with an “e,” and the other Park with an “i."’”

“Very well,” I said, after they had done laughing at the way in which my host had caught me; “now I’ll tell you what the Duke of Wellington said one morning.  You recollect his Grace met with an accident and lost an eye, which was kept in spirits of wine.  On asking him how he was, the Duke answered,—­

“’Oh, Lord Cairns asked me yesterday the same question; and I said, “I am rather depressed, but I believe my eye is in pretty good spirits."’”

CHAPTER XXXVIII.