OR,

OUR HEARTH AND HOMESTEAD.

BY

66

JOHN MILLS,

AUTHOR OF THE OLD ENGLISH GENTLEMAN," "THE STAGE COACH,

OR THE ROAD OF LIFE,' THE ENGLISH FIRESIDE,"

66 THE SPORTSMAN'S LIBRARY," &c. &c.

IN THREE VOLUMES.

VOL. III.

LONDON:

T. C. NEWBY, MORTIMER STREET.

1845.

THE OLD HALL;

OR,

OUR HEARTH AND HOMESTEAD.

CHAPTER I.

"A merrier man,

Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal:
His eye begets occasion for his wit;
For every object that the one doth catch,
The other turns to a mirth-roving jest;
Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor)
Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished;
So sweet and voluble is his discourse."

"HA!" exclaimed Job Sykes, drawing the breath through his clinched teeth, and pointing with the end of his pipe to the four horse

shoes suspended in a row on the wall of his sit

VOL. III.

B

ting-room, and which, from the periodical friction bestowed upon them by Mrs. Sykes, were polished silver. "Ha!" repeated

as bright as polished silver.

he, "there's a tale about those bits of iron worth hearing."

"So I've heard ye say before,” replied his boon-companion, Edward Dixon, looking askance at the objects referred to by the huntsman for a few brief seconds, and then veiling them from his sight by emitting a thick curling volume of smoke from his ponderous jaws.

"You see that old image there?" said Job, pointing with his dexter thumb at a professed portrait of one of his quaint-looking ancestors, suspended in ebony and black-oaken frames round the apartment.

Edward Dixon nodded assent, keeping his eyes bent sleepily on the picture.

"You may go some distance before you'll meet with such a curiosity as that," continued Job. "He was my great-grandfather, and lived stable-boy, second whip, first whip, and