“I’ll tell you what, Sharpe; is this respect, sir, to your commanding officer?  Sharpe I’ll mark you out for this.”

“Don’t you know,” replied Sharpe, “that two of us c&n play at that game; you had better keep yourself quiet, if you’re wise—­a man that’s in the habit of getting his nose pulled should be very inoffensive.”

“Very well,” said gallant Phil, “I’ll say no more, but—­” He then put spurs to handsome Harry, and rode off, full of vengeance against Sharpe, and of indignation at the contumelious reception he experienced at the hands of his grandfather.

Val’s letter to M’Slime was, as our readers know, anything but an index to the state of regard in which he held that worthy gentleman.  As we said, however, that ground was beginning to break a little under his feet, in spite of all his unction and Christian charity, we shall, while Darby is on his way to deliver his letter, take that opportunity of detailing a conversation between honest Solomon and Poll Doolin, upon one or two topics connected with our tale.

“Sam,” said Solomon to his clerk, “you were not present with us at prayer this morning!  You know we do not join in family worship until you come; and it is but our duty to take an interest in your spiritual welfare.  In the meantime, I should regret, for your own sake, that anything in the shape of a falling away from your opportunities should appear in you.  I speak now as your friend, Sam, not as your master—­nay, rather as your brother, Sam—­as a man who is not without his own lapses and infirmities, but who still trusts—­though not by his own strength—­that he may be looked upon, in some faint degree, as an example of what a man, wrestling with the cares and trials of life, ought at, least, to strive to be.  To Him be the praise!”

“I certainly overslept myself this morning, sir—­that is the truth.”

“Yes, Sam; sloth is one of the disguises under which the enemy often assails and overcomes us.  But to business, Sam.  There is an old woman in Castle Cumber, whose name I scarcely remember.  She goes dressed in faded black, and has a son, to whom, for wise purposes of course, it pleased Him to deny a full measure of ordinary sense?”

“Poll Doolin, sir, the old child-cadger, and her foolish son, Raymond of the hats.”

“Don’t say foolish, Sam; don’t say foolish—­we know not well what the true difference between wisdom and folly is, nor how much wisdom is manifested in the peculiar state of this person.  We know not, indeed, whether what we blindly, perhaps, term folly, may not be a gift to be thankful for.  You know the Word says, that the wisdom of man is foolishness before God.  Our duty therefore is, to be thankful and humble.”

“Well, sir; but about Poll Doolin, the child-cadger?”

“Child-cadger! that is a term I don’t understand, Sam.”

“Why, sir, it means a woman who carries—­”