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GUY MANNERING.
93

second Duke Humphrey; and, by the influence of the beadle's rod, caused the lame to walk, the blind to see, and the palsied to labour. He detected poachers, black-fishers, orchard-breakers, and pigeon-shooters; had the applause of the bench for his reward, and the public credit of an active magistrate.

All this good had its rateable proportion of evil. Even an admitted nuisance, of ancient standing, should not be abated without some caution. The zeal of our worthy friend now involved in great distress sundry personages, whose idle and mendicant habits his own lachesse had contributed to foster, until these habits had become irreclaimable, or whose real incapacity of exertion rendered them fit objects, in their own phrase, for the charity of all well-disposed Christians. The "long-remembered beggar," who for twenty years had made his regular round within the neighbourhood, received rather as an humble friend than as an object