Upon the first whiff the tradesmen came jumping into the room, and began to surround Lewis like so many yelping curs about a great boar; or, to use a modester simile, like duns at a great lord's levee the morning he goes into the country.

One pulled him by his sleeve, another by the skirt, a third hallooed in the ear.

They began to ask him for all that had been taken from their forefathers by stealth, fraud, force, or lawful purchase.

Some asked for manors, others for acres that lay convenient for them; that he would pull down his fences, level his ditches.

All agreed in one common demand that he should be purged, sweated, vomited, and starved, till he came to a sizeable bulk like that of his neighbours.