Her follower, the meek Millar,
stopped often to show the heir right and left, with simple geniality
and kindness.
Sir Charles stood on the hall steps, and invited all to come in and
take pot-luck.
Already spits were turning before great fires; a rump of beef, legs of
pork, and pease-puddings boiling in one copper; turkeys and fowls in
another; joints and pies baking in the great brick ovens; barrels of
beer on tap, and magnums of champagne and port marching steadily up
from the cellars, and forming in line and square upon sideboards and
tables.
Supper was laid in the hall, the dining-room, the drawing-room, and the
great kitchen.
Poor villagers trickled in: no man or woman was denied; it was open
house that night, as it had been four hundred years ago.
CHAPTER XXXII.
WHEN Sharpe's clerk retired, after serving that writ on Bassett,
Bassett went to Wheeler and treated it as a jest. But Wheeler looked
puzzled, and Bassett himself, on second thoughts, said he should like
advice of counsel. Accordingly they both went up to London to a
solicitor, and obtained an interview with a counsel learned in the law.
He heard their story, and said, "The question is, can you convince a
jury he was insane at the time?"
"But he can't get into court," said Bassett.
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