whose head was full of other things, did not stop to inquire the meaning of these last words. He little suspected that this man was a watchman, whom the over-vigilant verger had stationed there to guard the Hereford cathedral from his attacks. O’Neill little guessed that he had been arrested merely to keep him from blowing up the cathedral this night. The arrest had an excellent effect upon his mind, for he was a young man of good sense: it made him resolve to retrench his expenses in time,—to live more like a glover, and less like a gentleman,—and to aim more at establishing credit, and less at gaining popularity. He found from experience that good friends will not pay bad debts.
V
Conjecture is an Ignis Fatuus, that by seeming to light may dangerously mislead.
On Thursday morning our verger rose in unusually good spirits, congratulating himself upon the eminent service he had done to the city of Hereford by his sagacity in discovering the foreign plot to blow up the cathedral, and by his dexterity in having the enemy held in custody at the very hour when the dreadful deed was to have been perpetrated. Mr. Hill’s knowing friends further agreed it would be necessary to have a guard that should sit up every night in the churchyard, and that as soon as they could, by constantly watching the enemy’s motions, procure any information which the attorney should deem sufficient grounds for a legal proceeding, they should lay the whole business before the mayor.
After arranging all this most judiciously and mysteriously with the friends who were exactly of his own opinion, Mr. Hill laid aside his dignity of verger, and assuming his other character of a tanner, proceeded to his tan-yard. What was his surprise and consternation when he beheld his great rick of oak bark levelled to the ground! The pieces of bark were scattered far and wide,—some over the close, some over the fields, and some were seen swimming upon the water. No tongue, no pen, no muse can describe the feelings of our tanner at this spectacle!—feelings which became the more violent from the absolute silence which he imposed on himself upon this occasion. He instantly decided in his own mind that this injury was perpetrated by O’Neill, in revenge for his arrest, and went privately to the attorney to inquire what was to be done on his part to secure legal vengeance.
The attorney, unluckily,—or at least as Mr. Hill thought unluckily,—had been sent for, half an hour before, by a gentleman, at some distance from Hereford, to draw up a will, so that our tanner was obliged to postpone his legal operations.
We forbear to recount his return, and how many times he walked up and down the close to view his scattered bark, and to estimate the damage that had been done to him. At length that hour came which usually suspends all passions by the more imperious power of appetite,—the hour of dinner,—an hour of which it was never needful to remind Mr. Hill by watch, clock, or dial; for he was blessed with a punctual appetite, and powerful as punctual; so powerful, indeed, that it often excited the spleen of his more genteel or less hungry wife.
“Bless my stars, Mr. Hill,” she would oftentimes say, “I am really downright ashamed to see you eat so much; and when company is to dine with us, I do wish you would take a snack, by way of a damper, before dinner, that you may not look so prodigious famishing and ungenteel.”
Upon this hint, Mr. Hill commenced a practice, to which he ever afterwards religiously adhered, of going, whether there was to be company or no company, into the kitchen regularly every day, half an hour before dinner, to take a slice from the roast or the boiled before it went up to table. As he was this day, according to his custom, in the kitchen, taking his snack, by way of a damper, he heard the housemaid and the cook talking about some wonderful fortune-teller, whom the housemaid had been consulting. This fortune-teller was no less a