scruples of these intelligent and ingenuous youths,” said John, turning to the usher, “must, in conscience, receive effect; the law, as laid down in my copy of Squire Bull’s own contract, is this—­’That noe ushere be yntruded intoe anie schoole against ye wille of ye schooleboys in schoole-roome assembled.’  So, with your permission, we will adjourn the consideration of the case till the Greek Calends, or latter Lammas, if that be more convenient.”  And, so saying, he left John’s letter lying on the table, and shut the schoolroom door in the face of the astonished usher.

Squire Bull, as may be imagined, was not a little astonished and mortified at hearing from the usher, who returned looking foolish and chop-fallen, of this outbreak on the part of Jack, for whom he had really begun to conceive a sort of sneaking kindness; but knowing of old his fantastical and melancholic turn, he attributed this sally rather to the state of his bowels, which at all times he exceedingly neglected, and which, being puffed up with flatulency and indigestion to an extraordinary degree, not unfrequently acted upon his brain—­generating therein strange conceits and dangerous hallucinations—­than to any settled intention on Jack’s part to pick a quarrel with him or evade performance of the conditions of their indenture, so long as he was not under the influence of hypochondria.  And having this notion as to Jack’s motives, and knowing nothing of the private confab at the village lawyer’s, he could not help believing that, by a brisk course of purgatives and an antiphlogistic treatment—­and without resorting to a strait-waistcoat, which many who knew Jack’s pranks at once recommended him to adopt—­he might be cured of those acrid and intoxicating vapours, which, ascending into the brain, led him into such extravagant vagaries.  “I’faith,” said the Squire, “since the poor man has taken this mad fancy into his head as to the terms of his bargain, the best way to restore him to his senses is to bring the matter, as he himself seemed to desire it, before the Justices of the Peace at once:  ’Tis a hundred to one but he will have come to his senses long before they have come to a decision; at all events, unless he is madder than I take him to be, when he finds how plain the terms of the indenture are, he will surely submit with a good grace.’”

So thought the Squire; and, accordingly, by his direction, the usher-elect brought his case before the Justices at their next sittings, who forthwith summoned Jack before them to know why he refused performance of his contract with the Squire.  Jack came on the day appointed, attended by the attorney—­though for that matter he might have safely left him behind, being fully as much master of all equivocation or chicanery as if he had never handled anything but quills and quirks from his youth upward.  This, indeed, was probably the effect of his old training in Peter’s family, for whose hairsplitting distinctions and Jesuistical