A NORTH-COUNTRY HALL 69 



cout out the stackes out of the hart of a good eish 

 tree.' ' Damedg ' having been made good, the French- 

 man went to work with a will. His name proved a 

 heavy stumbling-block to the honest steward's ortho- 

 graphy, being rendered variously 'bemun,' 'bamant,' 

 'beamant,' and 'Mr. Beomant,' generally without 

 a capital initial, as if in stout Westmoreland con- 

 tempt for the foreigner. 'The ould brocken winded 

 coach hors dyed this day comeing from Milthropp 

 with a sack of otes on his back. We shall not 

 know what to do in the garden for him, and the 

 other all most killed weth contenually working . . . 

 but beamont hath put all the borders in as good 

 order as he cane, he is now moving and altering his 

 flowers and plants, and allso hath poulled down the 

 heg was round the mellion ground, and hath planted 

 the helli bore round the place, and he got very good 

 stacks coot and set round it.' 



Such letters, full of placid details of a country 

 gentleman's recreation, are in strange contrast to 

 many others which must have been delivered by the 

 same posts; for Graham, a staunch and restless 

 Jacobite, was proclaimed repeatedly, and once was 

 imprisoned on a charge of high treason. His am- 

 bitious schemes, his darkling plots, his hopes, scares, 



