136 l^he Trotter, 



expelled from Oxford, he had been running wild down at Ashby 

 amidsc scenes of riot and dissipation, and it could hardly be expected 

 that the son of such a father could turn out any other than a profli- 

 gate and a spendthrift. And so he did. But had he strictly fol- 

 lowed that father's example things might not have been so bad j 

 for, with all his wild, licentious habits, that father was a man of 

 sense, and though extravagant and fond of play, was still an excel- 

 lent manager. It is true he might have been looked coldly upon by 

 the country gentlemen, and many declined his invitations, alleging 

 that the boisterous merriment of the Grange was too much for 

 them. Still no one actually cut him, and he met his neighbours 

 upon neutral ground as an equal, and with a show of friendship on 

 either side. He was a perfect gentleman when he chose it ; and 

 although strange tales of the nightly doings up at the old hall got 

 whispered about, he never shocked propriety by any outward breach 

 of decorum. Surely, he argued, if he gave away a dinner, he had 

 a right to ask whom he pleased to eat it ; and if old Squire Langley 

 or the Hon. Mr. Compton did not choose to accept his invitations, 

 they could stop away. 



But Sam's bane was a decided and innate taste for low company, 

 and he followed his father's footsteps to the shadow, but among 

 associates ten times lower and more degraded. Even the few 

 country gentlemen who had, as it were, tacitly acknowledged the 

 father, and occasionally visited the Grange, could not but view with 

 repugnance the low tastes of the son. They gradually fell away 

 from Sam, and in a few years none but the outcasts of society would 

 associate with him. Broken-down horse-dealers, gamblers, the 

 lowest hangers-on of the racing-stables, prize-fighters, touts and 

 black-legs, were now the only company that were met at Ashby 

 Grange ; and If those old steel-clad, corsletted knights and warriors, 

 or ruffed dames of high degree, former proprietors of the estate, who 

 looked down grimly out of the canvas from the walls of the ancient 

 banqueting-room, could but have started into life and joined one of 

 Sam's nocturnal revels, they would have been rather struck with 

 the altered aspect of affairs. But for all this Sam had a kind heart 



