enter on the serious practical business of
beating each other's faces out of all likeness
to the image of man. Not having so many
disadvantages of early refinement and education
to contend against as his master, Shrowl
generally won the victory in these engagements
of the tongue. Indeed, though
nominally the servant, he was really the ruling
spirit in the house—acquiring unbounded
influence over his master by dint of out-
marching Mr. Treverton in every direction
on his own ground. Shrowl's was the harshest
voice; Shrowl's were the bitterest sayings;
and Shrowl's was the longest beard. If anyone
had accused Mr. Treverton of secretly
deferring to his servant's opinions,and secretly
fearing his servant's displeasure, he would
have repudiated the imputation with the
utmost bitterness and wrath. But it was not
the less true that Shrowl's was the upper
hand in the house, and that his decision on
any important matter was, sooner or later,
certain to be the decision at which his master
arrived. The surest of all retributions is the
retribution that lies in wait for a man who
boasts. Mr. Treverton was rashly given to
boasting of his independence, and when
retribution overtook him, it assumed a personal
form, and bore the name of Shrowl.

On a certain morning, about three weeks
after Mrs. Frankland had written to the
housekeeper at Porthgenna Tower to mention
the period at which her husband and herself
might be expected there, Mr. Treverton
descended, with his sourest face and his
surliest manner, from the upper regions of
the cottage to one of the rooms on the ground-
floor, which civilised tenants would probably
have called the parlour. Like his elder
brother, he was a tall, well-built man; but
his bony, haggard, sallow face, bore not the
slightest resemblance to the handsome, open,
sunburnt face of the Captain. No one, seeing
them together, could possibly have guessed
that they were brothers—so completely did
they differ in expression as well as in feature.
The heart-aches that he had suffered in
youth; the reckless, wandering, dissipated
life that he led in manhood; the petulance, the
disappointment, and the physical exhaustion
of his later days, had so wasted and worn
him away that he looked his brother's elder
by almost twenty years. With unbrushed
hair and unwashed face, with a tangled grey
beard, and an old patched, dirty flannel
dressing-gown that hung about him like a
sack, this descendant of a wealthy and ancient
family looked as if his birth-place had been
the workhouse and his vocation in life the
selling of cast-off clothes.

It was breakfast-time with Mr. Treverton
—that is to say, it was the time at which he
felt hungry enough to think about eating
something. In the same position, over the
mantel-piece, in which a looking-glass would
have been placed in a household of ordinary
refinement, there hung in the cottage
of Timon of London a side of bacon. On
the deal table by the fire, stood half a loaf
of heavy-looking brown bread; in a corner
of the room was a barrel of beer, with
two battered pewter pots hitched on to
nails in the wall above it; and under the
grate lay a smoky old gridiron, left just as it
had been thrown down when last used and
done with. Mr. Treverton took a greasy
clasp-knive out of the pocket of his dressing-
gown, out off a rasher of bacon, jerked the
gridiron on to the fire, and began to cook
his breakfast. He had just turned the rasher,
when the door opened, and Shrowl entered
the room, with his pipe in his mouth, bent
on the same eating errand as his master.

In personal appearance, Shrowl was short,
fat, flabby, and perfectly bald, except at the
back of his head, where a ring of bristly iron-
grey hair projected like a collar that had got
hitched out of its place. To make amends
for the scantiness of his hair, the beard which
he had cultivated by his master's desire, grew
far over his cheeks, and drooped down on his
chest in two thick jagged peaks. He wore
a very old long-tailed dress-coat, which he
had picked up a bargain in Petticoat Lane—
a faded yellow shirt, with a large torn frill—
velveteen trousers, turned up at the ankles—
and Blucher boots that had never been
blacked since the day when they last left the
cobbler's stall. His colour was unhealthily
florid, his thick lips curled upward with a
malicious grin, and his eyes were the nearest
approach, in form and expression, to the eyes
of a bull-terrier which those features are
capable of achieving when they are placed in
the countenance of a man. Any painter
wanting to express strength, insolence, ugliness,
coarseness, and cunning, in the face and
figure of one and the same individual, could
have discovered no better model for the
purpose, all the world over, than he might have
found in the person of Mr. Shrowl.

Neither master nor servant exchanged a
word, or took the smallest notice of each
other, on first meeting. Shrowl stood stolidly
contemplative, with his hands in his pockets,
waiting for his turn at the gridiron. Mr.
Treverton finished his cooking, took his bacon
to the table, and cutting himself a crust of
bread, began to eat his breakfast. When he
had disposed of the first mouthful, he
condescended to look up at Shrowl, who was at
that moment opening his clasp-knife and
approaching the side of bacon with slouching
steps and sleepily greedy eyes.

"What do you mean by that? " asked Mr.
Treverton, pointing with indignant surprise
at Shrowl's breast. " You ugly brute, you've
got a clean shirt on!"

"Thankee, sir, for noticing it," said Shrowl,
with a sarcastic affectation of extreme humility,
"This is a joyful occasion, this is. I couldn't
do no less than put a clean shirt on, when
it's my master's birthday. Many happy
returns, sir. Perhaps you thought I should