He declined to make oath never to repeat his offence; but said, sending his vanquisher to the deuce, with an amicable push at his shoulder, ‘Damned if I ever forget five foot five stretched six foot flat!’

Skepsey counted his feet some small amount higher; but our hearty rovers’ sons have their ballad moods when giving or taking a thrashing.  One of the third-class passengers, a lad of twenty, became Skepsey’s pupil, and turned out clever with the gloves, and was persuaded to enter the militia, and grew soon to be a corporal.  Thus there was profit of the affair, though the navvy sank out of sight.  Let us hope and pray he will not insult the hearing of females again.  If only females knew how necessary it is, for their sakes, to be able to give a lesson now and then!  Ladies are positively opposed.  And Judges too, who dress so like them.  The manhood of our country is kept down, in consequence.  Mr. Durance was right, when he said something about the state of war being wanted to weld our races together:  and yet we are always praying for the state of peace, which causes cracks and gaps among us!  Was that what he meant by illogical?  It seemed to Skepsey—­oddly, considering his inferior estimate of the value of the fair sex—­that a young woman with whom he had recently made acquaintance; and who was in Brighton now, upon missionary work; a member of the ‘Army,’ an officer of advancing rank, Matilda Pridden, by name; was nearer to the secret of the right course of conduct for individual citizens and the entire country than any gentleman he knew.

Yes, nearer to it than his master was!  Thinking of Mr. Victor Radnor, Skepsey fetched a sigh.  He had knocked at his master’s door at the office one day, and imagining the call to enter, had done so, and had seen a thing he could not expunge.  Lady Grace Halley was there.  From matters he gathered, Skepsey guessed her to be working for his master among the great folks, as he did with Jarniman, and Mr. Fenellan with Mr. Carling.  But is it usual; he asked himself—­his natural veneration framing the rebuke to his master thus—­to repay the services of a lady so warmly?—­We have all of us an ermined owl within us to sit in judgement of our superiors as well as our equals; and the little man, notwithstanding a servant’s bounden submissiveness, was forced to hear the judicial pronouncement upon his master’s behaviour.  His master had, at the same time, been saying most weighty kind words more and more of late:  one thing:—­that, if he gave all he had to his fellows, and did all he could, he should still be in their debt.  And he was a very wealthy gentleman.  What are we to think?  The ways of our superiors are wonderful.  We do them homage:  still we feel, we painfully feel, we are beginning to worship elsewhere.  It is the pain of a detachment of the very roots of our sea-weed heart from a rock.  Mr. Victor Radnor was an honour to his country.  Skepsey did not place the name of Matilda Pridden