Now, to all this stream of hearty English sympathy, the kind and proper feeling of young Sir John resolved to give a right direction.  His fashionable friends were gone, except Silliphant and Poynter, both good fellows in the main, and all the better for the absence (among others) of that padded old debauchee, Sir Richard Hunt, knight of the order of St. Sapphira—­that frivolous inanity, Lord George Pypp—­and that professed gentleman of gallantry, Mr. Harry Mynton.  The follies and the vices had decamped—­had scummed off, so to speak—­leaving the more rectified spirits behind them, to recover at leisure, as best they might, from all that ferment of dissipation.  So, then, there was now neither ridicule, nor interest, to stand in the way of a young and wealthy heir’s well-timed schemes of generosity.

Well-timed they were, and Sir John knew it, though calculation seldom had a footing in his warm and heedless heart; but he could not shut his eyes to the fact, that the state of feeling among his hereditary labourers was any thing but pleasant.  In truth, owing to the desperate malpractices of Quarles and Jennings, perhaps no property in the kingdom had got so ill a name as Hurstley:  discontent reigned paramount; incendiary fires had more than once occurred; threatening notices, very ill-spelt, and signed by one soi-disant Captain Blood, had been dropped, in dead of winter, at the door-sills of the principal farmers; and all the other fruits of long-continued penury, extortion, and mis-government, were hanging ripe upon the bough—­a foul and fatal harvest.

Therefore, did the kind young landlord, who had come to live among his own peasantry, resolve, not more nobly than wisely, to seize an opportunity so good as this, for restoring, by a stroke of generous policy, peace and content on his domain.  No doubt, the baronet rejoiced, as well he might, at the honourable acquittal of innocence, and the mysteries of murder now cleared up; he made small secret of his satisfaction at the doom of Jennings; and, as for Bridget Quarles, by all he could learn of her from tenants’ wives, and other female dependants, he had no mind to wish her back again, or to think her fate ill-timed:  nevertheless, he was even more glad of an occasion to vindicate his own good feelings; and prove to the world that bailiff Simon Jennings was a very opposite character to landlord Sir John Devereux Vincent.

To carry out his plan, he determined to redress all wrongs within one day, and to commence by bringing “honest Roger” in triumph home again to Hurstley; following the suggestion of Baron Parker, to make some social compensation for his wrongs.  With this view, Sir John took counsel of the county-town authorities, and it was agreed unanimously, excepting only one dissenting vote—­a rich and radical Quaker, one Isaac Sneak, grocer, and of the body corporate, who refused to lose one day’s service of his shopmen, and thereby (I rejoice to add) succeeded in