manners and looks, at least, to the end of their
days. But Dick was not of that sort; he only
left off cock-fighting, because it ceased out of
the country altogether and left him; he
indulged in and was patron of every conceivable
blackguardism that remained. Wine,
indeed, he was not addicted to, considering it
at best but poor stuff, only fit for clergymen;
but he drank brandy to an extent
which astonished even old Jacob himself. He
had contracted heavy debts at college, and
was condemned to a somewhat short allowance
of three hundred a-year, so that the
cheapness of the white ale had combined,
perhaps, with the desire of getting out of
sight of all his relatives in attracting him to
our simple village. Depraved almost utterly,
and coarse-minded beyond the coarsest,
as Dick was, he was however in many
respects less contemptible than the university
scamp of to-day. He was, at least, open
and inartificial; his vices were those of a
healthy though brutish animalism, and never
sank into cold, passionless debauchery. His
irreligion was manifest enough, indeed; but
it did not show itself in sneers or yawns.
Selfish he was, but by no means callous to
the wants and misery of others, and at all
events he never made a jest of them.
Bloated in the face, shaky in the hands, fishy
about the eyes, as the youth had already
become, he did not make a boast of his
infirmities, or think it fine to be used up. I have
known something of the sublime drawlers and
nil admirari exquisites of now-a-days, and,
upon the whole, I very much prefer poor
Drunken Dick; he was not altogether
adapted for friendship, but he was good-
natured and social. He sang over his jorums
of hot punch, with which he refreshed himself
at the conclusion of every verse, like a bird
singing at a streamlet's side; he gave away
his money with both hands at once; he swore
as hard as ever our armies did in Flanders;
and, with such gifts as these, it was no wonder
that he was hailed good fellow at once
by the crew of the Saucy Susan.

He had lodgings at the little inn, but all his
days and half his nights were spent at Watersleap,
drinking the skim milk from the half-
pint stoups, with the best of them, and acquiring
the free-trader's language with a facility
much greater than that he had ever exhibited
for Latin and Greek. Congenial as he
found old Jacob and his companions to be,
there was, however, at the smuggler's
cottage metal more attractive in the person of
Kitty Ashfield. In spite of her connections
and pursuits, she was a simple, innocent girl,
and presented to Richard Hindon a charming
contrast to all others whom he had ever been
acquainted with; the influence, slight as it was,
which she exerted over him, for good, showed
how much might have been done for the
dissolute, ruined youth, if he had had earlier, the
advantage of a woman's love and society. His
mother had died while he was an infant,
and he had no sister; his father and elder
brother were proud and apathetic to the last
degree, moved only at times to wrath, by his
various escapades and disgraces, and comforted
themselves—as they did not scruple to
tell him—that, while they lived and their
successors, he should never have one acre of
the great Hindon estates to squander in drink
and at the gaming-table. With these
unpromising prospects for the future he had
therefore never become the mark of intriguing
mammas, or the cynosure of fashionable
virgins with an eye to settlements. For the
last twenty years of a life that had only
reached to twenty-two, poor Dick had never
known the society of a woman at once
beautiful, honest, and disinterested; and
Kitty Ashfield was all three. When she rode
the galloping grey into Barton, with the
basket on her arm and the cigars in the
quilting of her petticoat, it seemed as though
she was born to be an amazon, so well she
sat, so perfectly she looked at ease, with her
long raven curls blown back and streaming on
the moorland breezes, and her delicate cheeks
a-glow. When she sculled herself in her
father's boat round Sleamouth Point, it
seemed the most natural thing in the world,
for those graceful arms to be rowing;
whatever she did, indeed, appeared to be the
occupation peculiarly fitted to show forth her
personal graces, and those were, of course, almost
the only ones of which Dick Hindon was a
judge. She could not read with any great
facility, but that art—if indeed he
thoroughly possessed it—was a dead-letter to him,
as he never looked at a book. She did not spell
well, when she wrote; not above one word in
three, perhaps, could be relied upon, but that
moderate average was as good as—if not better
—than Dick's; and, in his eyes, Kitty Ashfield
was perfect.

Did Richard Hindon, Esquire, late gentleman
commoner of Merton College, Oxford,
and second son of Sir Marmaduke Hindon of
the Wolds, then really contemplate making
old Jacob's contraband daughter his wife?
Why, no: we have a sneaking kindness
towards Dick, down here, at Scarcliff, but I can't
say that he did; it was not through pride,
nor on account of so great advantage
being on his side, without any to counter-
balance them on her's—which, at least, is
the opinion of society, when an aristocratic
blackguard has the exceeding good
fortune to wed a poor but honest country girl
—but that he did not like the notion of being
a married man, at all. Like the fop who
would have been a soldier if it had not been
for the villainous saltpetre, poor Dick, like
many others, would have wedded with
pleasure if it were not for the wedding-ring.
While all the men in Scarcliff were pitying
poor Kitty, and all the women saying it
served her right, she got to like handsome
Dick Hindon and his attentions better and
better every day. He began to leave off