Page:Headlong Hall - Peacock (1816).djvu/141

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
HEADLONG HALL.
133

Escot. "My good friend, will you allow me to take this skull away with me?"

"St. Winifred pless us!" exclaimed the Sexton: "would you have me haunted py his chost for taking his plessed pones out of consecrated cround? Would you have him come in the tead of the night, and fly away with the roof of my house? Would you have all the crop of my carden come to nothing? for, look you, his epitaph says:

"He that my pones shall ill pestow,
"Leek in his cround shall never crow."

"You will ill bestow them," said Mr. Escot, "in confounding them with those of the sons of little men, the degenerate dwarfs of later generations: you will well bestow them in giving them to me; for I will have this illustrious skull bound with a silver rim, and filled with mantling wine, with this inscrip-