366 The Baron Court of Little Brought-in. 



or swing a flail, strutting about with bibs, and favours, and brass 

 buttons hung round their necks and upon the breasts of their jackets, by 

 bits of red tape, and blue tape, and green tape, and some of them 

 with every sort of strings they can get, looking like so many antics 

 before a booth at a fair. But it all has a meaning : the simple folks 

 of the three manors at least such of them as cannot read are quite 

 delighted with these trappings, and believe that the wearers deserve 

 all the fine names by which they call each other. This must arise 

 in great part from the people being so much occupied upon their 

 farms, and never attending the Baron Court, for there one never 

 knows from what a member says whether he has or has not a bib or 

 a brass button. 



So much for the members of the court, at least some of them : 

 and now for a short notice of the court itself, previous to that of what 

 goes on in it. The court used to meet in the old barn, which was 

 rickety and full of rat-holes, as nobody can tell for how many gene- 

 rations the rats had infested it in great numbers. There were both 

 the sorts of rats there, the black and the brown; and, as nobody can 

 exactly tell in what country rats were first invented, an old rat-catcher, 

 who used often to smoke his pipe of an evening over the way at the 

 Chequers, used to give a knowing look and shake of the head when- 

 ever rats and the baron's old barn were mentioned in the same 

 sentence, as much as to say, " I know when, where, and how they 

 came." 



These rats had always been troublesome inmates of the barn, and 

 of late years they got to be perfect pests, the more so that they made 

 their holes at the one side of the barn, and used their teeth against 

 the other. They whisked about the benches upon which the mem- 

 bers sat, and gnawed their buckskins in such a manner that every 

 " seat of honour" in the court was in jeopardy. This got wind all 

 over the barony, and the people often talked about coming against 

 them in a body, but they were for the most part two busy, and they 

 who would have come were so poor as not to be able to buy cudgels 

 wherewith to maul the vermin. 



Things got worse and worse every day, and many thought the old 

 barn would come down "like a bagful of horns," and finish the court, 

 and at the same time drive all the rats to the baron's kitchen, which 

 last would have been a sad calamity to the poor beggars. At last 

 the old barn was burnt, nobody could tell how, and some hoped that 

 the rats had all perished in the flames, while others, who had got used 

 to them and liked them, hoped not. Thus wise men will differ ; and 

 somebody says that " wisdom is nothing but a concatenation of differ- 

 ences," which is perhaps true. 



The old barn could have been spared, and so some thought the 

 rats might; but things would not "jump" at all without the court, and 

 so a temporary shed was patched up until a new barn should be 

 erected, one party insisting that it ought to be rat-proof, and another 

 that it ought not. At all events, the court resolved to have some 

 time and talk about it, and they accordingly met in the temporary 

 shed, which they had no sooner entered, than, lo and behold, the 



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