from our house he suddenly escaped and proceeded to the Town Hall, and, after many violent acts, threw a silver tankard of scalding negus among the ladies.  He was then secured for that evening.  This was the last time of his appearing at Leicester, till brought from Ashby-de-la-Zouche to prison there.

“It has been much regretted by his friends that, as Lady Ferrers and some of his property had been taken from him, no greater precaution had been used with respect to his own safety as well as that of all around him.  Whilst sober, my father, who had a real regard for him, always urged that he was quite manageable; and when his sisters ventured to come with him to the races, they had an absolute reliance on his good intentions and promises.”

Once he disappeared for a time, and made his way to London, where he lodged obscurely in the neighbourhood of Muswell Hill.  Here he surrounded himself with grooms and ostlers, and other low company of both sexes, abandoning himself to orgies of debauchery.  Among his milder eccentricities he would, we are told, mix mud with his beer, and drain tankard after tankard of the nauseating mixture.  He drank his coffee from the spout of the coffee-pot, and wandered about, a grotesque figure, with one side of his face clean-shaven.

But even then he had sane moments, when the raving madman of yesterday became the courteous, polite, shrewd man of to-day, charming all by his wit and high-bred geniality.  It was, of course, inevitable that a career such as this, marked by a madness which grew daily, should lead sooner or later to tragedy.  And tragedy was coming swiftly.  It came early in the year 1760, before Lord Ferrers had reached his fortieth birthday.  And this is how it came.

The Court of Chancery had ordered that his lordship’s rents should be received and accounted for by a receiver, who, by way of concession to his feelings, was to be appointed by himself.  The Earl, who rarely lacked shrewdness, looked round for the most suitable person to fill this delicate post—­for a man who should be as clay in his hands; and such a “tool” he thought he had found in his steward, Mr John Johnson, who had known him since boyhood, and who had never thwarted him even in his maddest caprices.  Mr Johnson was duly appointed receiver; but the Earl’s self-congratulation was short-lived.  The steward proved that he was possessed of a conscience, and that neither cajolery nor threats could make him swerve from the straight path of honesty.

In vain the Earl coaxed and blustered and bullied.  The receiver was adamant.  He had a duty to perform, and at any cost he would discharge it.  His lordship’s rage at such unlooked-for recalcitrancy was unbounded.  He began to hate the too honest steward with a murderous hatred; behind his back he loaded him with abuse, and vowed that, of all his enemies, the steward was the most virulent and implicable.  But while the Earl was nursing this diabolical hatred, he showed little sign of it to Johnson, who was so unsuspectingly walking to meet tragedy.