Captain Medwin, and at a sharp turn getting a
severe fall, which is, as usual, placed in the most
comic light by his noble friend. He makes
one more appearance does this Irish Quixote,
who lost five thousand a year for love. As
the Mountgarret trial drew on in the year
'fifty-four, a commissioner and two barristers,
with their bags, set off for Italy, struggling
painfully over mountains and through
defiles, to reach a strangely barren spot on the
Adriatic, called Fano. There, was found a grey-
haired gentleman in a ripe old age, who had
retired to this solitary spot; and sitting down
before him—the commissioner in the middle, and
the barristers at opposite sides—they proceeded
to extract from him, by way of examination and
cross-examination, the facts of his life that have
just been detailed.

At the trial, the faithful Stride was discredited
in that story of the calling up of the servants
and the proclaiming of the Honourable Butler
as husband; so the jury "brought a verdict
home" for the defendant, and Viscount
Mountgarret keeps his coronet steady on his head.

FARMER PINCHER'S RATS.

IT was all a false report about the Golden
Age having departed from the land; it still
flourishes, as it always did, away there in
Downshire.

I am just returned from a visit to old Fanner
Debenham, who lives in a little sunny village
about thirty miles, more or less, from Shaftesbury,
and in the centre of the Blackmoor Vale
country.

The first glimpse I caught of Stoneton was on
suddenly emerging from a deep dell, banked
with fern and white with bindweed-bells, among
which the nightingale sang all to itself (practising,
I suppose) even at noonday, in the season
of its singing-time. But now was harvest-time,
and there was no sound in the dell but
the sullen bees, honey-gathering in the wild
geraniums. From the green darkness of this
deep-sunk lane, I emerged as from a telescope-
tube into a broad panoramic plain with some
thirty miles of horizon. Those hills there, of
a cloudy blue, reach out towards the sea; that
little fume of smoke, boiling up there like the
mere smoke of a pic-nic fire, is the smoke of one
of the chief Dorsetshire towns; and yonder
I see Dorchester. In the foreground, the long
lines of trees stretch like regiments; and as for
the hedges, they look like ranks of skirmishers
thrown out before the main army.

Stoneton is but a small place, but the cottages
are all of stone, and the windows are wide and
mullioned. There, is the rector's, with the
pleasant garden round it, and the standard roses
shaking in the wind. That squat blind Norman
tower is the church, with its daily congregation
of martens, who build in ever; cranny
and corbel.

Farmer Debenham's house has not sacrificed
much to the Graces; utility, and not beauty,
is the household god of the Debenhams. The
stacks are square and clean cut, as so many tin
loaves; but the garden is slovenly and neglected.
The thrashiiig-machine is covered up as trim as
if it. were a new barouche; but the vine gads
over the house, with the most spendthrift
wantonness, reaching its curling tendrils in at the
windows, and thrusting the fruit prodigally
into your hands. The hollyhocks, too, thrust
up their staffs of rosette flowers with an almost
Indian luxuriance, while the roses wrap the old
house now in one great crimson-scented robe:
so that it looks quite regal in its old age, and
faces the sun with a rustic gride as of one new
come to power.

But what I meant about the Golden Age was
this: I meant that the manners and social
customs of Farmer Debenham and his family
are as pure, simple, and unsophisticated as
were the manners of people in Shakespeare's
time. There is no luxury or corruption entered
Farmer Debenham's house; no late hours, or
debilitating sauces, or niminy-piminy pretence
for him or his; no make-believe parties given
to people whom you don't want to see, and
accepted by people who don't want to see you;
no empty expense on turtle and venison, and
after-repentance on boiled neck of mutton and
suet-pudding. No, Farmer Debenham, though
he is not the least aware of it, lives a stern,
hard life. He rises at five—four in summer
—lunches at ten, dines at half-past twelve. I
hear him up, in my dreams. In my midnight,
in the soft warmth of my first sleep, I hear
him knocking the tables and chairs together,
which he calls being "about betimes." As
the farmer is up at four, and then always finds
the floor washed and the table set, and as the
wife and daughters are yet rosy and well-
looking, and evidently have no stint of healthy sleep,
I begin to conjecture that somebody stops up at
night and cleans everything all trim and snug
when we are gone to bed—not that there is any
noise, no, not to fray a mouse. As for going to
bed, everybody is turned in and asleep by nine;
no one abroad but the crickets, the rats, and
outside the window the "flitter mice."

And that reminds me of the rats, the real staple
of my story; but first let me dismiss the Debenhams,
father and sons. They are frank as sailors,
honest, sturdy, stolid, obstinate, and, intellectually,
perhaps, rather heavy. They are dark-red
and brown-red, according as they are old or young.
They are proud of Dorsetshire, and they like
the condition to which they were born. There
are four sons, and each has his special duties,
which he performs with military discipline.
Father goes to market, buys and sells; Jack, the
eldest son, looks after the home farm; Tom, the
second, attends to the labourers, starts them
and keeps them agoing; Bill sees to the thrashing,
the horses, and the in-door work; Joe, the
youngest, has a playful existence, sees to the
cows, shoots the rats, and kills rabbits and
trout for family consumption. As to Mrs.
Debenham and daughters, they have quite enough
to do with the dairy and the poultry. The piano
gets mouldy in the house of the Debenhams;