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Neither did this pride stay at archbishops and bishops, but descended lower, even to the rake-hells of the clergy and puddles of all ungodliness. For, beside the injury received of their superiors, how was King John dealt withal by the vile Cistertians at Lincoln in the second of his reign?

Now as I stood there drinking in, as it were, the loneliness of the prospect, my thoughts turned for the hundredth time to the game-keeper's account of what had befallen the two rustic rake-hells. I admit that the concluding part of Hawkins' story, quite evidently regarded by him as a detail of no importance, had re-awakened hope which had been at lowest ebb in the hour of my arrival.

I have this same very day, which is the last both of May and of me, with a greal deal of labour, toil, and difficulty, chased out of my house a rabble of filthy, unclean, and plaguily pestilentious rake-hells, black beasts, dusk, dun, white, ash-coloured, speckled, and a foul vermin of other hues, whose obtrusive importunity would not permit me to die at my own ease; for by fraudulent and deceitful pricklings, ravenous, harpy-like graspings, waspish stingings, and such-like unwelcome approaches, forged in the shop of I know not what kind of insatiabilities, they went about to withdraw and call me out of those sweet thoughts wherein I was already beginning to repose myself and acquiesce in the contemplation and vision, yea, almost in the very touch and taste of the happiness and felicity which the good God hath prepared for his faithful saints and elect in the other life and state of immortality.

But what a time would the quiet, worthy men have, among these rake-hells, who would delight to astound them with the most extravagant gunpowder tales, embroidered with all kinds of foreign oaths; clink the can with them; pledge them in deep potations; bawl drinking songs in their ears; and occasionally fire pistols over their heads, or under the table, and then laugh in their faces, and ask them how they liked the smell of gunpowder.

Meredith, in which he told of how he had secured his position on the staff of the general, and gave an outline history of the siege of Boston, the campaigning about New York, and the retreat to Brunswick. "I knew the rake-hells 'ud never fight," asserted the squire, at one point. "Like all green troops, they object to discipline, and have shown cowardice in the face of the enemy.