And here we must leave Kippletringan to look after our hero, lest our readers should fear they are to lose sight of him for another quarter of a century.

CHAPTER XVI

     Our Polly is a sad slut, nor heeds what we have taught her,
     I wonder any man alive will ever rear a daughter,
     For when she’s drest with care and cost, all tempting, fine,
       and gay,
     As men should serve a cucumber, she flings herself away.

          Beggar’s Opera.

After the death of Mr. Bertram, Mannering had set out upon a short tour, proposing to return to the neighbourhood of Ellangowan before the sale of that property should take place.  He went, accordingly, to Edinburgh and elsewhere, and it was in his return towards the south-western district of Scotland, in which our scene lies, that, at a post-town about a hundred miles from Kippletringan, to which he had requested his friend, Mr. Mervyn, to address his letters, he received one from that gentleman which contained rather unpleasing intelligence.  We have assumed already the privilege of acting a secretis to this gentleman, and therefore shall present the reader with an extract from this epistle.

’I beg your pardon, my dearest friend, for the pain I have given you in forcing you to open wounds so festering as those your letter referred to.  I have always heard, though erroneously perhaps, that the attentions of Mr. Brown were intended for Miss Mannering.  But, however that were, it could not be supposed that in your situation his boldness should escape notice and chastisement.  Wise men say that we resign to civil society our natural rights of self-defence only on condition that the ordinances of law should protect us.  Where the price cannot be paid, the resignation becomes void.  For instance, no one supposes that I am not entitled to defend my purse and person against a highwayman, as much as if I were a wild Indian, who owns neither law nor magistracy.  The question of resistance or submission must be determined by my means and situation.  But if, armed and equal in force, I submit to injustice and violence from any man, high or low, I presume it will hardly be attributed to religious or moral feeling in me, or in any one but a Quaker.  An aggression on my honour seems to me much the same.  The insult, however trifling in itself, is one of much deeper consequence to all views in life than any wrong which can be inflicted by a depredator on the highway, and to redress the injured party is much less in the power of public jurisprudence, or rather it is entirely beyond its reach.  If any man chooses to rob Arthur Mervyn of the contents of his purse, supposing the said Arthur has not means of defence, or the skill and courage to use them, the assizes at Lancaster or Carlisle will do him justice by tucking up the robber; yet who will say I am bound to wait for this justice, and submit to being plundered in