at a marriage when I should be at a funeral, shooting when I should be keeping my books—­in short, it has not a good word to say for me.  And as for thee, Fogg, it says thou art an idle, good-for-nothing fellow; or, if thou art good for aught, it is only for something that leads to evil.  It says thou drinkest prodigiously, liest confoundedly, and swearest most profanely; that thou art ever more ready to go to the alehouse than to church, and that none of the girls can ’scape thee.  Nay, the slanderers even go so far as to assert thou wouldst not hesitate to say, ‘Stand and deliver!’ to a true man on the highway.  That is what the world says of thee.  But, hang it! never look chapfallen, man.  Let us go to the stables, and then we will in to breakfast; after which we will proceed to the Ribble, and spear the old otter.”

A fine old manorial residence was Downham, and beautifully situated, as has been shown, on a woody eminence to the north of Pendle Hill.  It was of great antiquity, and first came into the possession of the Assheton family in 1558.  Considerable additions had been made to it by its present owner, Nicholas, and the outlay necessarily required, combined with his lavish expenditure, had contributed to embarrass him.  The stables were large, and full of horses; the kennels on the same scale, and equally well supplied with hounds; and there was a princely retinue of servants in the yard—­grooms, keepers, falconers, huntsmen, and their assistants—­to say nothing of their fellows within doors.  In short, if it had been your fortune to accompany the squire and his friend round the premises—­if you had walked through the stables and counted the horses—­if you had viewed the kennels and examined the various hounds—­the great Lancashire dogs, tall, shaggy, and heavy, a race now extinct; the Worcestershire hounds, then also in much repute; the greyhounds, the harriers, the beagles, the lurchers, and, lastly, the verminers, or, as we should call them, the terriers,—­if you had seen all these, you would not have wondered that money was scarce with him.  Still further would your surprise at such a consequence have diminished if you had gone on to the falconry, and seen on the perches the goshawk and her tercel, the sparrowhawk and her musket, under the care of the ostringer; and further on the falcon-gentle, the gerfalcon, the lanner, the merlin, and the hobby, all of which were attended to by the head falconer.  It would have done you good to hear Nicholas inquiring from his men if they had “set out their birds that morning, and weathered them;” if they had mummy powder in readiness, then esteemed a sovereign remedy; if the lures, hoods, jesses, buets, and all other needful furniture, were in good order; and if the meat were sweet and wholesome.  You might next have followed him to the pens where the fighting cocks were kept, and where you would have found another source of expense in the cock-master, Tom Shaw—­a knave who not only got high wages from his master, but understood so well the dieting of his birds that he could make them win or lose a battle as he thought proper.  Here, again, Nicholas had much to say, and was in raptures with one cock, which he told Fogg he would back to any amount, utterly unconscious of a significant look that passed between his friend and the cock-master.