On returning to the inn, Dr. Riccabocca took the occasion of learning from the innkeeper (who was indeed a tenant of the Squire’s) such particulars as he could collect; and a few days afterward Mr. Hazeldean received a letter from a solicitor of repute in London, stating that a very respectable foreign gentleman had commissioned him to treat for Clump Lodge, otherwise called the “Casino;” that the said gentleman did not shoot—­lived in great seclusion—­and, having no family, did not care about the repairs of the place, provided only it were made weather-proof—­if the omission of more expensive reparations could render the rent suitable to his finances, which were very limited.  The offer came at a fortunate moment—­when the steward had just been representing to the Squire the necessity of doing something to keep the Casino from falling into positive ruin, and the Squire was cursing the fates which had put the Casino into an entail—­so that he could not pull it down for the building materials.  Mr. Hazeldean therefore, caught at the proposal even as a fair lady, who has refused the best offers in the kingdom, catches at last at some battered old Captain on half-pay, and replied that, as for rent, if the solicitors client was a quiet respectable man, he did not care for that.  But that the gentleman might have it for the first year rent free, on condition of paying the taxes and putting the place a little in order.  If they suited each other, they could then come to terms.  Ten days subsequently to this gracious reply, Signer Riccabocca and his servant arrived; and, before the years end, the Squire was so contented with his tenant that he gave him a running lease of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, at a rent nearly nominal, on condition that Signer Riccabocca would put and maintain the place in repair, barring the roof and fences, which the Squire generously renewed at his own expense.  It was astonishing, by little and little, what a pretty place the Italian had made of it, and what is more astonishing, how little it had cost him.  He had indeed painted the walls of the hall, staircase, and the rooms appropriated to himself, with his own hands.  His servant had done the greater part of the upholstery.  The two between them had got the garden into order.  The Italians seemed to have taken a joint love to the place, and to deck it as they would have done some favorite chapel to their Madonna.

It was long before the natives reconciled themselves to the odd ways of the foreign settlers.  The first thing that offended them was the exceeding smallness of the household bills.  Three days out of the seven, indeed, both man and master dined on nothing else but the vegetables in the garden, and the fishes in the neighboring rill; when no trout could be caught they fried the minnows, (and certainly, even in the best streams, minnows are more frequently caught than trouts.) The next thing which angered the natives quite as much, especially the female part of the neighborhood,