Ravenshoe. By Henry Kingsley.

6 RAVENSHOE.
Lord Saltire smiled sweetly, bowed elegantly, and took snuff.
"Why do you intrude into my room and insult my guests?"
said Densil, casting an angry glance at the priest, who stood
calmly, like a black pillar, with his hands folded before him. "It
is unendurable."
" Quem Deus vult," &c. Father Clifford had seen that scowl
once or twice before, but he would not take warning. He said, -
"I am ordered not to go westward without you. I command
you to come."
s" Command me! command a Ravenshoe!" said Densil, furiously.
Father Clifford, by way of mending matters, now began to
lose his temper.
"You would not be the first Ravenshoe who has been commanded by a priest; ay, and has had to obey too," said he.
"And you will not be the first jack-priest who has felt the
weight of a Ravenshoe's wrath," replied Densil, brutally.
Lord Saltire leant back, and said to the ambient air, "I'11
back the priest, five twenties to one."
This was too much. Densil would have liked to quarrel with
Saltire, but that was death, - he was the deadest shot in Europe.
He grew furious, and beyond all control. He told the priest to
go to (further than purgatory); grew blasphemous, emphatically
renouncing the creed of his forefathers, and, in fact, all other
creeds. The priest grew hot and furious too, retaliated in no
measured terms, and finally left the room with his ears stopped,
shaking the dust off his feet as he went. Then Lord Saltire
drew up to the table again, laughing.
"Your estates are entailed, Ravenshoe, I suppose?" said he.
N o0."
"Oh! It's your deal, my dear fellow."
Densil got an angry letter from his father in a few days, demanding full apologies and recantations, and an immediate return
home. Densil had no apologies to make, and did not intend to
return till the end of the season. His father wrote, declining the
honor of his further acquaintance, and sending him a draft for
fifty pounds to pay his outstanding bills, which he very well knew
amounted to several thousands. In a short time the great Catholic tradesmen with whom he had been dealing began to press for
money in a somewhat insolent way; and now Densil began to see
that, by defying and insulting the faith and the party to which he
belonged, he had merely cut himself off from rank, wealth, and
position. He had defied the partie pretre, and had yet to feel
their power. In two months he was in the Fleet prison.
His servant (the title " tiger " came in long after this), a half
groom, half valet, such as men kept in those days, - a simple lad