"Mad!" pronounced Sir Hugh Quickset, a
neighbouring squire.

Sir George, who was in the commission,
attended the next bench of magistrates. The
lunatic took the lead in all the proceedings,
decided a matter which involved great legal difficulty,
snuffed out the pert clerk who had hitherto
guided the decisions of the bench, and, with cool
superior nods, took his leave, not to appear again.
But Sir Hugh Quickset was silenced.

"Under a cloud," affirmed old Purkiss, of
Great Covey: a retired solicitor, whose mental
habit inclined to the suspicious. (If report were
to be trusted, none had enjoyed better
opportunities of judging what might be the aspect of
a gentleman under the aforesaid atmospherical
pressure than Mr. Purkiss himself!) But a royal
duke who was staying in the county, rode across
fifteen miles to visit Mournivale, stayed half the
day, and walked through Covey-le-Street arm in
arm with his host, in earnest conversation—Mr.
Purkiss was bowled out.

Intense became the curiosity excited by the
manifest desire of Sir George to conceal the
course of his domestic life from every eye. The
powers of conjecture were exhausted in imagining
theories of explanation for the complete
seclusion in which the family, the two ladies
especially, were understood to live. In respect
to this, the steward, Harper, was as profoundly
ignorant as everybody else. Not only had he
never seen his lady's face or heard her voice,
but no intelligible allusion to her among the
servants had ever reached his ear. He knew,
however, that a Creole maid, called Eisa, was
her principal attendant, and that she did
occasionally give audience to Morgan le Fay.

"My lady calls," the latter would say, with a
start; sometimes amid the clatter of the kitchen;
sometimes when not a sound but the ticking of
the clock broke the dead hush. And away she
would hasten.

Harper observed that none of the domestics
ever went abroad, except on Sundays, when
such as were English attended the little church,
and, service over, marched back again, being
readmitted by the huge Dutch porter, Hans Troek,
who never quitted his post by night or day,
and the monotony of whose presence inspired
Harper with such an insane desire to kick him,
that, but for his native slowness of apprehension,
Herr Troek must have read it in his
face twenty times a day. Harper had to pass
him so often, for on him devolved almost all the
communication that was held with the outer
world. In the forenoon the steward transacted
with his master, any business relating to the
estate. After that, he executed commissions
for Morgan le Fay. At nine in the evening
Harper found that he was expected to take his
leave; and what went on after that, in the
mysterious household, was a strange and gloomy
secret.

CHAPTER IV.

"BUT about Lady Corsellis," was the
perpetual question of the spinsterhood of Covey-le-
treet, " who, and what can she be?"

And Covey the Great replied (through Mr.
Tincture) that they would run any reasonable
risk (except matrimony) to learn.

For months the neighbourhood was in a state
of agreeable horror, for where mystery is there
will be terror, and it got to be believed that
Lady Corsellis, of Mournivale, was not a
spectacle for human eyes to see. I can hardly
explain through what fluctuations the general
faith settled down (but so it did) into a conviction
that, though elsewise fair of face, the
unhappy lady had the snout of a pig! At all
events, this belief triumphed. The district was
rich in mast and acorns. In consideration of his
consort, Sir George had suffered his beech and
oak to stand!

There were still, it is true, dissentients to the
porcine theory. At the Jolly Bachelor, in Great
Covey, conducted by Mr. Brutus Bulfinch, the
pig's face was opposed by a still more terrible
surmise. It is doubtful whether the host would
have admitted anybody into his parlour, or the
barmaid (an elderly female, unmarried) executed
her office with any degree of alacrity on behalf of
one, who did not faithfully believe that it was
either a pig's head or the devil: with a strong
bias towards the latter opinion.

No wonder; for the very nephew of the host
had had a glimpse of the phenomenon.

Coming home late from a distant market,
Jack Bulfinch took it into his head to shorten
the road, by cutting across the grounds of
Mournivale. This was before the erection of
the new wall. He had easily scaled the then-
existing defences, had passed the mansion, and
was about to dive into the plantation, when the
great front door swung suddenly open, and out
it came, walking tamely beside Sir George
himself. Jack, by his own account, had barely
time to notice that my Lady Corsellis had
immense eyes, like lurid lanterns, which glowed
even through a thick protrusive sort of covering
that veiled her head and face; likewise, a tail of
such prodigious length, that Sir George, with
much seeming politeness, carried a portion of it
across his arm. This tail went near to
discredit Jack's, but for the confirmation the whole
story received from the deposition (made rather
with, than upon, oath) of Cephas Pudgebrook,the
second gardener, who rolled the terrace on the
following day, and observed that it bore distinct
traces of a goat or pig, " dibbled regular all along."
Mr. Pudgebrook was not a little horrified to
learn that he had been actually engaged for two
hours (all the while whistling careless secular
tunes) in smoothing out the footprints of the
enemy of mankind!

Curiosity was at its utmost stretch, when an
order was one day received by Timothy Beatle,
the purblind clerk, to have new hassocks placed
in the Mournivale pew. Hassocks! They were,
then, unquestionably coming to church next
Sunday. At all events, Sir George and—and
the other—would come.

The Reverend Benedict Loanham, of Great
Covey, prepared his best discourse. The number
of those who attended their religious duties on