LIFE OF MYTTON. 139 



hilarity of high animal spirits, Mytton was much 

 given 10 practical jokes, as all his friends know. 

 Thus, on the same lady once accompanying him to 

 the kennel, he shut the door upon her for an instant, 

 after he himself had got outside of it, and this was 

 magnified into his wishing, or, I believe, iiLtending, 

 that she might be devoured by his fox-hounds. 

 Again, he threw her into deep water ! Nonsense ; 

 he was never mad enough to do that. He merely, 

 one very hot day, pushed her into the shallow of his 

 lake at Halston, a little over her shoes. All this 

 was, no doubt, wrong by a young lady who had been 

 brought up so tenderly as Miss Jones had been 

 reared, but with a hundred young ladies I could 

 name, who had been differently treated in their child- 

 hood, nothing would have been thought of it beyond 

 a joke. And then we should look at the man. If, 

 independently of his own immediate connections, he 

 had a greater regard for one person than for any 

 other, I have reason to believe it was for his Halston 

 chaplain, and he was two or three times nearly being 

 the death of him — once absolutely confining him to 

 his bed for several weeks, from the consequences of 

 his having, by way of a " lark," knocked him over 

 some iron railing at his hall-door at Halston. Cruelty 



