CHAPTER XVII.
A RELATIVE.
Claim'd kindred there, and had his claims allow'd.
_Deserted Village._ Starting at the unexpected and undesired apparition which presented itself, in the manner described at the end of the last chapter, Mowbray yet felt, at the same time, a kind of relief, that his meeting with Lord Etherington, painfully decisive as that meeting must be, was for a time suspended.

So it was with a mixture of peevishness and internal satisfaction, that he demanded what had procured him the honour of a visit from Mr.Touchwood at this late hour.
"Necessity, that makes the old wife trot," replied Touchwood; "no choice of mine, I assure you--Gad, Mr.Mowbray, I would rather have crossed Saint Gothard, than run the risk I have done to-night, rumbling through your breakneck roads in that d----d old wheelbarrow .-- On my word, I believe I must be troublesome to your butler for a draught of something--I am as thirsty as a coal-heaver that is working by the piece.

You have porter, I suppose, or good old Scotch two-penny ?" With a secret execration on his visitor's effrontery, Mr.Mowbray ordered the servant to put down wine and water, of which Touchwood mixed a gobletful, and drank it off.
"We are a small family," said his entertainer; "and I am seldom at home--still more seldom receive guests, when I chance to be here--I am sorry I have no malt liquor, if you prefer it." "Prefer it ?" said Touchwood, compounding, however, another glass of sherry and water, and adding a large piece of sugar, to correct the hoarseness which, he observed, his night journey might bring on,--"to be sure I prefer it, and so does every body, except Frenchmen and dandies .-- No offence, Mr.Mowbray, but you should order a hogshead from Meux--the brown-stout, wired down for exportation to the colonies, keeps for any length of time, and in every climate--I have drank it where it must have cost a guinea a quart, if interest had been counted." "When I _expect_ the honour of a visit from you, Mr.Touchwood, I will endeavour to be better provided," answered Mowbray; "at present your arrival has been without notice, and I would be glad to know if it has any particular object." "This is what I call coming to the point," said Mr.Touchwood, thrusting out his stout legs, accoutred as they were with the ancient defences, called boot-hose, so as to rest his heels upon the fender.

"Upon my life, the fire turns the best flower in the garden at this season of the year--I'll take the freedom to throw on a log .-- Is it not a strange thing, by the by, that one never sees a fagot in Scotland?
You have much small wood, Mr.Mowbray, I wonder you do not get some fellow from the midland counties, to teach your people how to make a fagot." "Did you come all the way to Shaws-Castle," asked Mowbray, rather testily, "to instruct me in the mystery of fagot-making ?" "Not exactly--not exactly," answered the undaunted Touchwood; "but there is a right and a wrong way in every thing--a word by the way, on any useful subject, can never fall amiss .-- As for my immediate and more pressing business, I can assure you, that it is of a nature sufficiently urgent, since it brings me to a house in which I am much surprised to find myself." "The surprise is mutual, sir," said Mowbray, gravely, observing that his guest made a pause; "it is full time you should explain it." "Well, then," replied Touchwood; "I must first ask you whether you have never heard of a certain old gentleman, called Scrogie, who took it into what he called his head, poor man, to be ashamed of the name he bore, though owned by many honest and respectable men, and chose to join it to your surname of Mowbray, as having a more chivalrous Norman sounding, and, in a word, a gentlemanlike twang with it ?" "I have heard of such a person, though only lately," said Mowbray.
"Reginald Scrogie Mowbray was his name.

I have reason to consider his alliance with my family as undoubted, though you seem to mention it with a sneer, sir.