We sat down to dinner, about forty in number, occupying two tables placed parallel to each other, in the spacious dining-room of the mansion.  Choice fish of every kind; venison from Nannau Park, celebrated for the delicious flavour of its fat bucks; mountain-mutton, from the fertile pastures of Llanfachreth; the noble sirloin, and, in fact, every substantial delicacy that wealth could procure, pressed even to groaning the broad tables of our host; while the harper in the hall twanged his instrument with a force and a fury, that plainly showed his previous intimacy with the good cheer of the place.  But noble and magnificent as our entertainment was in the eating department, it was infinitely surpassed by that which was devoted to the orgies of Bacchus.  No sooner was the brief and scarcely audible grace pronounced by the chaplain, than in marched old Pearson, the gray-headed butler, bearing in each hand a goblet, in form like an acorn, and fashioned of the dark polished oak of the far-famed Spirits-Blasted Tree,[7] richly ornamented with appropriate silver emblems.  One of these was placed reversed by the side of the president and croupier of each table, and presently afterwards flanked by a huge silver tankard of foaming ale, strong enough almost to blow into the air a first-rate man-of-war.  Filling this goblet, which held very nearly a pint, the president made his speech to the health and happiness of the young ’squire, and draining it dry, passed it on to his left-hand neighbour.  The croupier did the same, and like the great bear of Bradwardine, did the acorn of Nannau begin to make its rounds, in a manner quite as fearful to me as was the terrific approach of the bear aforesaid to the heir of Waverley Honor.  Unfortunately for me, I sat between two determined and well-seasoned topers, who took especial care that I should not only fill to each toast, but drain the cup to the very bottom; so that, novice as I was in this sort of hilarity, I found myself, in a very short time, lying down under a laburnum tree in the lawn, and composing myself very comfortably—­no, not very comfortably—­to sleep.  I had my sleep, however; and when I awoke and re-entered the house, a merry group of guests had surrounded the harper in the hall, and were singing Penillion at full stretch, to the now unsteady and somewhat discordant accompaniment of the minstrel; the laugh was of course against me, but good-nature, rather than contempt, characterised the bantering, and I bore it all in good part.  The party broke up about eleven, and before midnight I was at home, after a magnificent walk of three miles, over the mountains, in the moonlight. The Inspector.

    [7] This was an old blasted oak, standing a few years ago in Nannau
        Park, to the infinite horrification of the honest mountaineers. 
        Tradition had imbued it with a terrible and awful influence—­for,
        some four or five hundred years ago, the gigantic skeleton