“For shame, Pypp!” shouted after him the warm-hearted Siliphant; “I tell you what it is, Vincent, you must let me give a toast:—­’Grace and her lover!’ here, my man, your master allows you to take a glass of wine with us; help your beauty too.”

The toast was drank with high applause:  and before Jonathan humbly led away his pleased and blushing Grace, he took an opportunity of saying,

“If I may be bold enough to speak, kind gentlemen, I wish to thank you:  I oughtn’t to be long, for I am nothing but your servant; let it be enough to say my heart is full.  And I’m in hopes it wouldn’t be very wrong in me, kind gentlemen, to propose;—­’My noble master—­honour and happiness to him!’”

“Bravo!  Jonathan, bravo-o-o-o!” there was a clatter of glasses;—­and the humble pair of lovers retreated under cover of the toast.

CHAPTER XLIII.

SIMON ALONE.

JENNINGS gathered himself up, from that Jew-of-Malta tumble down the steps, less damaged by the fall than could have been imagined possible; the fact being that his cat-like nature had stood him in good stead—­he had lighted on his feet; and nothing but a mighty dorsal bruise bore witness to the prowess of a Jonathan.

But, if his body was comparatively sound, the inner man was bruised all over:  he crept back, and retreated to his room, in as broken and despondent a frame of mind, as any could have wished to bless him wherewithal.  However, he still had one thing left to live for:  his hoard—­that precious hoard within his iron box, and then—­the crock of gold.  He took Sir John’s threat about detaining, and so forth, as merely future, and calculated on rendering it nugatory, by decamping forthwith, chattels and all; but he little expected to find that the idea had already been acted upon!

On that identical afternoon, when Simon had gone forth to insult Grace Acton with his villanous proposals, Sir John, on returning from a ride, had commanded his own seal to be placed on all Mr. Jennings’s effects, and the boxes to be forthwith removed to a place of safety:  induced thereto by innumerable proofs from every quarter that the bailiff had been cheating him on a most liberal scale, and plundering his tenants systematically.  Therefore, when Jennings hastened to his chamber to console himself for all things by looking at his gold, and counting out a bag or two—­it was gone, gone, irrevocably gone! safely stored away for rigid scrutiny in the grated muniment-room of Hurstley.  Oh, what a howl the caitiff gave, when he saw that his treasure had been taken! he was a wild bull in a net; a crocodile caught upon the hooks; a hyena at bay.  What could he do? which way should he turn? how help himself, or get his gold again?  Unluckily—­Oh, confusion, confusion!—­his account-books were along with all his hoard, those tell-tale legers, wherein he had duly noted down, for his own private