The last arrivals were Mr. Cornelius Chromatic, the most scientific of all amateurs of the fiddle, with his two blooming daughters, Miss Tenorina and Miss Graziosa; Sir Patrick O’Prism, a dilettante painter of high renown, and his maiden aunt, Miss Philomela Poppyseed, a compounder of novels written for the express purpose of supporting every species of superstition and prejudice; and Mr. Panscope, the chemical, botanical, geological, astronomical, critical philosopher, who had run through the whole circle of the sciences and understood them all equally well.

Mr. Milestone was impatient to take a walk round the grounds, that he might examine how far the system of clumping and levelling could be carried advantageously into effect; and several of the party supporting the proposition, with Squire Headlong and Mr. Milestone leading the van, they commenced their perambulation.

III.—­The Tower and the Skull

The result of Mr. Milestone’s eloquence was that he and the squire set out again, immediately after breakfast next morning, to examine the capabilities of the scenery.  The object that most attracted Mr. Milestone’s admiration was a ruined tower on a projecting point of rock, almost totally overgrown with ivy.  This ivy, Mr. Milestone observed, required trimming and clearing in various parts; a little pointing and polishing was necessary for the dilapidated walls; and the whole effect would be materially increased by a plantation of spruce fir, the present rugged and broken ascent being first converted into a beautiful slope, which might be easily effected by blowing up a part of the rock with gunpowder, laying on a quantity of fine mould, and covering the whole with an elegant stratum of turf.

Squire Headlong caught with avidity at this suggestion, and as he had always a store of gunpowder in the house, he insisted on commencing operations immediately.  Accordingly, he bounded back to the house and speedily returned, accompanied by the little butler and half a dozen servants and labourers with pickaxes and gunpowder, a hanging stove, and a poker, together with a basket of cold meat and two or three bottles of Madeira.

Mr. Milestone superintended the proceedings.  The rock was excavated, the powder introduced, the apertures strongly blockaded with fragments of stone; a long train was laid to a spot sufficiently remote from the possibility of harm, and the squire seized the poker, and applied the end of it to the train.

At this critical moment Mr. Cranium and Mr. Panscope appeared at the top of the tower, which, unseeing and unseen, they had ascended on the opposite side to that where the squire and Mr. Milestone were conducting their operations.  Their sudden appearance a little dismayed the squire, who, however, comforted himself with the reflection that the tower was perfectly safe, and that his friends were in no probable danger but of a knock on the head from a flying fragment of stone.