THE STEWARD.

Earl de Montford sat in a plainly furnished room in his stately mansion. Gorgeously decorated as were the other apartments of his princely residence, this apartment, with its plain business-look—its hard benches for such of the tenantry as came to him or his agent on business—its walls garnished with abstracts of the Game and Poor Law Enactments—its worn old chairs and heavy oak presses, the open doors of some of which disclosed bundles of old papers, parchments, etc.—this little room, the only one almost ever seen by any save the aristocracy and their followers—exercised and contained frequently more of human hope and fear than any other or the whole of the others of this sumptuous edifice. Here the toil-worn farmer came to pay his dues to the Lord of the Manor—here often too with beating heart and quivering lip, the old servant of the soil came to beg for time—time to enable him by hard pinching to make up his proportion of the sum spent in luxury by his landlord. Ah! reader! could those old walls reveal the sounds, the tales of human suffering, of heartless avarice, and callous indifference—of sneering assumption and hopeless woe, thy brain would be as fire, thy heart would sicken, and thy blood would boil, till rushing over every prudent thought, through grinding teeth and passion-paling lips would start, the one wild word, Revenge!

I have said the room was plainly furnished, but there was one exception—the chair in which the Earl sat. This was an old one, formerly the chair of state in which the old Barons his ancestors had presided at many a scene of wassail, with their retainers. It had been stuffed and new-covered to suit modern luxury, but the armorial bearings remained still carved in the wood of the high back, with the proud motto, "Nulli Secundi," second to none.

The Earl was not alone. His agent, a hard-featured man of business, sat at a desk, busy with papers, and a venerable old man, who had been his father's steward, stood a little behind his chair. There was a frown on the brow of the nobleman, as after a stern glance at the old man, he asked,

'Has that scoundrel been apprehended yet?'

'He has not, your lordship,' said the agent, slowly folding up a document; 'nor does it seem likely he will be. I have had the old haunts searched—I have, as you directed, promised large rewards for his apprehension, and threatened the tenants if they harbor him, but no clue to his hiding-place has yet been discovered. I am afraid he has left.'

'He has not,' interrupted the Earl. 'He is here, in this neighbourhood. I feel his hated presence. He must have harborers, Johnson. The parvenu millionaire—the cotton lord—harbors these ruffians by refusing to prosecute poachers. He preaches equal rights, forsooth! Break down his fences—send my deer to stray into his park—get some one to fire his barns—I will pay them. He has thwarted me, and he shall feel the agony of a long and fluctuating law-suit. Oh! for one day of my Norman ancestors! I would sweep such vermin from the earth. Waters!' said he, turning to the steward, 'beware! I have, from respect to my father's memory, somewhat restrained myself towards you. You have pleaded this man's cause. Say no more. He has threatened me—dared to use reproaches and threats to a peer of the realm—he shall be crushed as a noxious reptile!'

'My lord,' said the old man firmly, 'I was your father's steward—I was your grandfather's foster-brother and playmate—man and boy, I have been in the service of your family for over seventy years, and for the love of your house have I withstood you in wrong-doing—I beseech you again, let this man go. You well know he is an injured man. Add not more to that final account which you as well as I must one day render before God.'

'Palter such trash to coward fools!—I want none of your priestcraft,' returned the nobleman. 'Do I not know the reason of all this affected love for justice and mercy. Your grand-daughter was to have married this midnight robber—they were betrothed, or some such trash. Find him—doubtless she knows how—let them marry—such a son-in-law will be an honor to your family, and a comfort to your declining years.'

'Your insinuations and your sneers fall as harmless upon me as your threats,' said the steward with dignity. 'I am eighty-nine, and shall soon be beyond them: but when you brand with undeserved infamy one who never injured you—when you accuse my innocent grandchild of being privy to the concealment of a midnight robber, as you but now called the unhappy man whom your ill-usage, whom your misdeeds drove from a happy home and honorable course of life, you commit an action, only equalled in its baseness, by its cowardice!'