At rather an ugly corner of an uphill reach I came on the wreck of
a chaise lying on one side in the ditch, a man and a woman in
animated discourse in the middle of the road, and the two
postillions, each with his pair of horses, looking on and laughing
from the saddle.

'Morning breezes! here's a smash!' cried Rowley, pocketing his
flageolet in the middle of the Tight Little Island.

I was perhaps more conscious of the moral smash than the physical--
more alive to broken hearts than to broken chaises; for, as plain
as the sun at morning, there was a screw loose in this runaway
match.  It is always a bad sign when the lower classes laugh:
their taste in humour is both poor and sinister; and for a man,
running the posts with four horses, presumably with open pockets,
and in the company of the most entrancing little creature
conceivable, to have come down so far as to be laughed at by his
own postillions, was only to be explained on the double hypothesis,
that he was a fool and no gentleman.

I have said they were man and woman.  I should have said man and
child.  She was certainly not more than seventeen, pretty as an
angel, just plump enough to damn a saint, and dressed in various
shades of blue, from her stockings to her saucy cap, in a kind of
taking gamut, the top note of which she flung me in a beam from her
too appreciative eye.  There was no doubt about the case:  I saw it
all.  From a boarding-school, a black-board, a piano, and
Clementi's Sonatinas, the child had made a rash adventure upon life
in the company of a half-bred hawbuck; and she was already not only
regretting it, but expressing her regret with point and pungency.

As I alighted they both paused with that unmistakable air of being
interrupted in a scene.  I uncovered to the lady and placed my
services at their disposal.

It was the man who answered.  'There's no use in shamming, sir,'
said he.  'This lady and I have run away, and her father's after
us:  road to Gretna, sir.  And here have these nincompoops spilt us
in the ditch and smashed the chaise!'

'Very provoking,' said I.

'I don't know when I've been so provoked!' cried he, with a glance
down the road, of mortal terror.

'The father is no doubt very much incensed?' I pursued civilly.

'O God!' cried the hawbuck.  'In short, you see, we must get out of
this.  And I'll tell you what--it may seem cool, but necessity has
no law--if you would lend us your chaise to the next post-house, it
would be the very thing, sir.'

'I confess it seems cool,' I replied.

'What's that you say, sir?' he snapped.

'I was agreeing with you,' said I.  'Yes, it does seem cool; and
what is more to the point, it seems unnecessary.  This thing can be
arranged in a more satisfactory manner otherwise, I think.  You can
doubtless ride?'

This opened a door on the matter of their previous dispute, and the
fellow appeared life-sized in his true colours.  'That's what I've
been telling her:  that, damn her! she must ride!' he broke out.
'And if the gentleman's of the same mind, why, damme, you shall!'

As he said so, he made a snatch at her wrist, which she evaded with
horror.

I stepped between them.

'No, sir,' said I; 'the lady shall not.'

He turned on me raging.  'And who are you to interfere?' he roared.

'There is here no question of who I am,' I replied.  'I may be the
devil or the Archbishop of Canterbury for what you know, or need
know.  The point is that I can help you--it appears that nobody
else can; and I will tell you how I propose to do it.  I will give
the lady a seat in my chaise, if you will return the compliment by
allowing my servant to ride one of your horses.'

I thought he would have sprung at my throat.

'You have always the alternative before you:  to wait here for the
arrival of papa,' I added.

And that settled him.  He cast another haggard look down the road,
and capitulated.

'I am sure, sir, the lady is very much obliged to you,' he said,
with an ill grace.

I gave her my hand; she mounted like a bird into the chaise;
Rowley, grinning from ear to ear, closed the door behind us; the
two impudent rascals of post-boys cheered and laughed aloud as we
drove off; and my own postillion urged his horses at once into a
rattling trot.  It was plain I was supposed by all to have done a
very dashing act, and ravished the bride from the ravisher.

In the meantime I stole a look at the little lady.  She was in a
state of pitiable discomposure, and her arms shook on her lap in
her black lace mittens.

'Madam--' I began.

And she, in the same moment, finding her voice:  'O, what you must
think of me!'

'Madam,' said I, 'what must any gentleman think when he sees youth,
beauty and innocence in distress?  I wish I could tell you that I
was old enough to be your father; I think we must give that up,' I
continued, with a smile.  'But I will tell you something about
myself which ought to do as well, and to set that little heart at
rest in my society.  I am a lover.  May I say it of myself--for I
am not quite used to all the niceties of English--that I am a true
lover?  There is one whom I admire, adore, obey; she is no less
good than she is beautiful; if she were here, she would take you to
her arms:  conceive that she has sent me--that she has said to me,
"Go, be her knight!"'

'O, I know she must be sweet, I know she must be worthy of you!'
cried the little lady.  'She would never forget female decorum--nor
make the terrible erratum I've done!'

And at this she lifted up her voice and wept.

This did not forward matters:  it was in vain that I begged her to
be more composed and to tell me a plain, consecutive tale of her
misadventures; but she continued instead to pour forth the most
extraordinary mixture of the correct school miss and the poor
untutored little piece of womanhood in a false position--of
engrafted pedantry and incoherent nature.

'I am certain it must have been judicial blindness,' she sobbed.
'I can't think how I didn't see it, but I didn't; and he isn't, is
he?  And then a curtain rose . . . O, what a moment was that!  But
I knew at once that YOU WERE; you had but to appear from your
carriage, and I knew it, O, she must be a fortunate young lady!
And I have no fear with you, none--a perfect confidence.'

'Madam,' said I, 'a gentleman.'

'That's what I mean--a gentleman,' she exclaimed.  'And he--and
that--HE isn't.  O, how shall I dare meet father!'  And disclosing
to me her tear-stained face, and opening her arms with a tragic
gesture:  'And I am quite disgraced before all the young ladies, my
school-companions!' she added.

'O, not so bad as that!' I cried.  'Come, come, you exaggerate, my
dear Miss--?  Excuse me if I am too familiar:  I have not yet heard
your name.'

'My name is Dorothy Greensleeves, sir:  why should I conceal it?  I
fear it will only serve to point an adage to future generations,
and I had meant so differently!  There was no young female in the
county more emulous to be thought well of than I.  And what a fall
was there!  O, dear me, what a wicked, piggish donkey of a girl I
have made of myself, to be sure!  And there is no hope! O, Mr.--'

And at that she paused and asked my name.

I am not writing my eulogium for the Academy; I will admit it was
unpardonably imbecile, but I told it her.  If you had been there--
and seen her, ravishingly pretty and little, a baby in years and
mind--and heard her talking like a book, with so much of schoolroom
propriety in her manner, with such an innocent despair in the
matter--you would probably have told her yours.  She repeated it
after me.

'I shall pray for you all my life,' she said.  'Every night, when I
retire to rest, the last thing I shall do is to remember you by
name.'

Presently I succeeded in winning from her her tale, which was much
what I had anticipated:  a tale of a schoolhouse, a walled garden,
a fruit-tree that concealed a bench, an impudent raff posturing in
church, an exchange of flowers and vows over the garden wall, a
silly schoolmate for a confidante, a chaise and four, and the most
immediate and perfect disenchantment on the part of the little
lady.  'And there is nothing to be done!' she wailed in conclusion.
'My error is irretrievable, I am quite forced to that conclusion.
O, Monsieur de Saint-Yves! who would have thought that I could have
been such a blind, wicked donkey!'

I should have said before--only that I really do not know when it
came in--that we had been overtaken by the two post-boys, Rowley
and Mr. Bellamy, which was the hawbuck's name, bestriding the four
post-horses; and that these formed a sort of cavalry escort, riding
now before, now behind the chaise, and Bellamy occasionally
posturing at the window and obliging us with some of his
conversation.  He was so ill-received that I declare I was tempted
to pity him, remembering from what a height he had fallen, and how
few hours ago it was since the lady had herself fled to his arms,
all blushes and ardour.  Well, these great strokes of fortune
usually befall the unworthy, and Bellamy was now the legitimate
object of my commiseration and the ridicule of his own post-boys!

'Miss Dorothy,' said I, 'you wish to be delivered from this man?'

'O, if it were possible!' she cried.  'But not by violence.'

'Not in the least, ma'am,' I replied.  'The simplest thing in life.
We are in a civilised country; the man's a malefactor--'

'O, never!' she cried.  'Do not even dream it!  With all his
faults, I know he is not THAT.'

'Anyway, he's in the wrong in this affair--on the wrong side of the
law, call it what you please,' said I; and with that, our four
horsemen having for the moment headed us by a considerable
interval, I hailed my post-boy and inquired who was the nearest
magistrate and where he lived.  Archdeacon Clitheroe, he told me, a
prodigious dignitary, and one who lived but a lane or two back, and
at the distance of only a mile or two out of the direct road.  I
showed him the king's medallion.

'Take the lady there, and at full gallop,' I cried.

'Right, sir!  Mind yourself,' says the postillion.

And before I could have thought it possible, he had turned the
carriage to the rightabout and we were galloping south.

Our outriders were quick to remark and imitate the manoeuvre, and
came flying after us with a vast deal of indiscriminate shouting;
so that the fine, sober picture of a carriage and escort, that we
had presented but a moment back, was transformed in the twinkling
of an eye into the image of a noisy fox-chase.  The two postillions
and my own saucy rogue were, of course, disinterested actors in the
comedy; they rode for the mere sport, keeping in a body, their
mouths full of laughter, waving their hats as they came on, and
crying (as the fancy struck them) Tally-ho!'  'Stop, thief!'  'A
highwayman!  A highwayman!'  It was otherguess work with Bellamy.
That gentleman no sooner observed our change of direction than he
turned his horse with so much violence that the poor animal was
almost cast upon its side, and launched her in immediate and
desperate pursuit.  As he approached I saw that his face was deadly
white and that he carried a drawn pistol in his hand.  I turned at
once to the poor little bride that was to have been, and now was
not to be; she, upon her side, deserting the other window, turned
as if to meet me.

'O, O, don't let him kill me!' she screamed.

'Never fear,' I replied.

Her face was distorted with terror.  Her hands took hold upon me
with the instinctive clutch of an infant.  The chaise gave a flying
lurch, which took the feet from under me and tumbled us anyhow upon
the seat.  And almost in the same moment the head of Bellamy
appeared in the window which Missy had left free for him.

Conceive the situation!  The little lady and I were falling--or had
just fallen--backward on the seat, and offered to the eye a
somewhat ambiguous picture.  The chaise was speeding at a furious
pace, and with the most violent leaps and lurches, along the
highway.  Into this bounding receptacle Bellamy interjected his
head, his pistol arm, and his pistol; and since his own horse was
travelling still faster than the chaise, he must withdraw all of
them again in the inside of the fraction of a minute.  He did so,
but he left the charge of the pistol behind him--whether by design
or accident I shall never know, and I dare say he has forgotten!
Probably he had only meant to threaten, in hopes of causing us to
arrest our flight.  In the same moment came the explosion and a
pitiful cry from Missy; and my gentleman, making certain he had
struck her, went down the road pursued by the furies, turned at the
first corner, took a flying leap over the thorn hedge, and
disappeared across country in the least possible time.

Rowley was ready and eager to pursue; but I withheld him, thinking
we were excellently quit of Mr. Bellamy, at no more cost than a
scratch on the forearm and a bullet-hole in the left-hand claret-
coloured panel.  And accordingly, but now at a more decent pace, we
proceeded on our way to Archdeacon Clitheroe's, Missy's gratitude
and admiration were aroused to a high pitch by this dramatic scene,
and what she was pleased to call my wound.  She must dress it for
me with her handkerchief, a service which she rendered me even with
tears.  I could well have spared them, not loving on the whole to
be made ridiculous, and the injury being in the nature of a cat's
scratch.  Indeed, I would have suggested for her kind care rather
the cure of my coat-sleeve, which had suffered worse in the
encounter; but I was too wise to risk the anti-climax.  That she
had been rescued by a hero, that the hero should have been wounded
in the affray, and his wound bandaged with her handkerchief (which
it could not even bloody), ministered incredibly to the recovery of
her self-respect; and I could hear her relate the incident to 'the
young ladies, my school-companions,' in the most approved manner of
Mrs. Radcliffe!  To have insisted on the torn coat-sleeve would
have been unmannerly, if not inhuman.

Presently the residence of the archdeacon began to heave in sight.
A chaise and four smoking horses stood by the steps, and made way
for us on our approach; and even as we alighted there appeared from
the interior of the house a tall ecclesiastic, and beside him a
little, headstrong, ruddy man, in a towering passion, and
brandishing over his head a roll of paper.  At sight of him Miss
Dorothy flung herself on her knees with the most moving
adjurations, calling him father, assuring him she was wholly cured
and entirely repentant of her disobedience, and entreating
forgiveness; and I soon saw that she need fear no great severity
from Mr. Greensleeves, who showed himself extraordinarily fond,
loud, greedy of caresses and prodigal of tears.

To give myself a countenance, as well as to have all ready for the
road when I should find occasion, I turned to quit scores with
Bellamy's two postillions.  They had not the least claim on me, but
one of which they were quite ignorant--that I was a fugitive.  It
is the worst feature of that false position that every gratuity
becomes a case of conscience.  You must not leave behind you any
one discontented nor any one grateful.  But the whole business had
been such a 'hurrah-boys' from the beginning, and had gone off in
the fifth act so like a melodrama, in explosions, reconciliations,
and the rape of a post-horse, that it was plainly impossible to
keep it covered.  It was plain it would have to be talked over in
all the inn-kitchens for thirty miles about, and likely for six
months to come.  It only remained for me, therefore, to settle on
that gratuity which should be least conspicuous--so large that
nobody could grumble, so small that nobody would be tempted to
boast.  My decision was hastily and nor wisely taken.  The one
fellow spat on his tip (so he called it) for luck; the other
developing a sudden streak of piety, prayed God bless me with
fervour.  It seemed a demonstration was brewing, and I determined
to be off at once.  Bidding my own post-boy and Rowley be in
readiness for an immediate start, I reascended the terrace and
presented myself, hat in hand, before Mr. Greensleeves and the
archdeacon.

'You will excuse me, I trust,' said I.  'I think shame to interrupt
this agreeable scene of family effusion, which I have been
privileged in some small degree to bring about.'

And at these words the storm broke.

'Small degree! small degree, sir!' cries the father; 'that shall
not pass, Mr. St. Eaves!  If I've got my darling back, and none the
worse for that vagabone rascal, I know whom I have to thank.  Shake
hands with me--up to the elbows, sir!  A Frenchman you may be, but
you're one of the right breed, by God!  And, by God, sir, you may
have anything you care to ask of me, down to Dolly's hand, by God!'

All this he roared out in a voice surprisingly powerful from so
small a person.  Every word was thus audible to the servants, who
had followed them out of the house and now congregated about us on
the terrace, as well as to Rowley and the five postillions on the
gravel sweep below.  The sentiments expressed were popular; some
ass, whom the devil moved to be my enemy, proposed three cheers,
and they were given with a will.  To hear my own name resounding
amid acclamations in the hills of Westmorland was flattering,
perhaps; but it was inconvenient at a moment when (as I was morally
persuaded) police handbills were already speeding after me at the
rate of a hundred miles a day.

Nor was that the end of it.  The archdeacon must present his
compliments, and pressed upon me some of his West India sherry, and
I was carried into a vastly fine library, where I was presented to
his lady wife.  While we were at sherry in the library, ale was
handed round upon the terrace.  Speeches were made, hands were
shaken, Missy (at her father's request) kissed me farewell, and the
whole party reaccompanied me to the terrace, where they stood
waving hats and handkerchiefs, and crying farewells to all the
echoes of the mountains until the chaise had disappeared.

The echoes of the mountains were engaged in saying to me privately:
'You fool, you have done it now!'

'They do seem to have got 'old of your name, Mr. Anne,' said
Rowley.  'It weren't my fault this time.'

'It was one of those accidents that can never be foreseen,' said I,
affecting a dignity that I was far from feeling.  'Some one
recognised me.'

'Which on 'em, Mr. Anne?' said the rascal.

'That is a senseless question; it can make no difference who it
was,' I returned.

'No, nor that it can't!' cried Rowley.  'I say, Mr. Anne, sir, it's
what you would call a jolly mess, ain't it? looks like "clean
bowled-out in the middle stump," don't it?'

'I fail to understand you, Rowley.'

'Well, what I mean is, what are we to do about this one?' pointing
to the postillion in front of us, as he alternately hid and
revealed his patched breeches to the trot of his horse.  'He see
you get in this morning under Mr. Ramornie--I was very piticular to
Mr. Ramornie you, if you remember, sir--and he see you get in again
under Mr. Saint Eaves, and whatever's he going to see you get out
under? that's what worries me, sir.  It don't seem to me like as if
the position was what you call stratetegic!'

'Parrrbleu! will you let me be!' I cried.  'I have to think; you
cannot imagine how your constant idiotic prattle annoys me.'

'Beg pardon, Mr. Anne,' said he; and the next moment, 'You wouldn't
like for us to do our French now, would you, Mr. Anne?'

'Certainly not,' said I.  'Play upon your flageolet.'

The which he did with what seemed to me to be irony.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all!  I was so downcast by my
pitiful mismanagement of the morning's business that I shrank from
the eye of my own hired infant, and read offensive meanings into
his idle tootling.

I took off my coat, and set to mending it, soldier-fashion, with a
needle and thread.  There is nothing more conducive to thought,
above all in arduous circumstances; and as I sewed, I gradually
gained a clearness upon my affairs.  I must be done with the
claret-coloured chaise at once.  It should be sold at the next
stage for what it would bring.  Rowley and I must take back to the
road on our four feet, and after a decent interval of trudging, get
places on some coach for Edinburgh again under new names!  So much
trouble and toil, so much extra risk and expense and loss of time,
and all for a slip of the tongue to a little lady in blue!



CHAPTER XXIV--THE INN-KEEPER OF KIRKBY-LONSDALE



I had hitherto conceived and partly carried out an ideal that was
dear to my heart.  Rowley and I descended from our claret-coloured
chaise, a couple of correctly dressed, brisk, bright-eyed young
fellows, like a pair of aristocratic mice; attending singly to our
own affairs, communicating solely with each other, and that with
the niceties and civilities of drill.  We would pass through the
little crowd before the door with high-bred preoccupation,
inoffensively haughty, after the best English pattern; and
disappear within, followed by the envy and admiration of the
bystanders, a model master and servant, point-device in every part.
It was a heavy thought to me, as we drew up before the inn at
Kirkby-Lonsdale, that this scene was now to be enacted for the last
time.  Alas! and had I known it, it was to go of with so inferior a
grace!

I had been injudiciously liberal to the post-boys of the chaise and
four.  My own post-boy, he of the patched breeches, now stood
before me, his eyes glittering with greed, his hand advanced.  It
was plain he anticipated something extraordinary by way of a
pourboire; and considering the marches and counter-marches by which
I had extended the stage, the military character of our affairs
with Mr. Bellamy, and the bad example I had set before him at the
archdeacon's, something exceptional was certainly to be done.  But
these are always nice questions, to a foreigner above all:  a shade
too little will suggest niggardliness, a shilling too much smells
of hush-money.  Fresh from the scene at the archdeacon's, and
flushed by the idea that I was now nearly done with the
responsibilities of the claret-coloured chaise, I put into his
hands five guineas; and the amount served only to waken his
cupidity.

'O, come, sir, you ain't going to fob me of with this?  Why, I seen
fire at your side!' he cried.

It would never do to give him more; I felt I should become the
fable of Kirkby-Lonsdale if I did; and I looked him in the face,
sternly but still smiling, and addressed him with a voice of
uncompromising firmness.

'If you do not like it, give it back,' said I.

He pocketed the guineas with the quickness of a conjurer, and, like
a base-born cockney as he was, fell instantly to casting dirt.

''Ave your own way of it, Mr. Ramornie--leastways Mr. St. Eaves, or
whatever your blessed name may be.  Look 'ere'--turning for
sympathy to the stable-boys--'this is a blessed business.  Blessed
'ard, I calls it.  'Ere I takes up a blessed son of a pop-gun what
calls hisself anything you care to mention, and turns out to be a
blessed mounseer at the end of it!  'Ere 'ave I been drivin' of him
up and down all day, a-carrying off of gals, a-shootin' of
pistyils, and a-drinkin' of sherry and hale; and wot does he up and
give me but a blank, blank, blanketing blank!'

The fellow's language had become too powerful for reproduction, and
I passed it by.

Meanwhile I observed Rowley fretting visibly at the bit; another
moment, and he would have added a last touch of the ridiculous to
our arrival by coming to his hands with the postillion.

'Rowley!' cried I reprovingly.

Strictly it should have been Gammon; but in the hurry of the
moment, my fault (I can only hope) passed unperceived.  At the same
time I caught the eye of the postmaster.  He was long and lean, and
brown and bilious; he had the drooping nose of the humourist, and
the quick attention of a man of parts.  He read my embarrassment in
a glance, stepped instantly forward, sent the post-boy to the
rightabout with half a word, and was back next moment at my side.

'Dinner in a private room, sir?  Very well.  John, No. 4!  What
wine would you care to mention?  Very well, sir.  Will you please
to order fresh horses?  Not, sir?  Very well.'

Each of these expressions was accompanied by something in the
nature of a bow, and all were prefaced by something in the nature
of a smile, which I could very well have done without.  The man's
politeness was from the teeth outwards; behind and within, I was
conscious of a perpetual scrutiny:  the scene at his doorstep, the
random confidences of the post-boy, had not been thrown away on
this observer; and it was under a strong fear of coming trouble
that I was shown at last into my private room.  I was in half a
mind to have put off the whole business.  But the truth is, now my
name had got abroad, my fear of the mail that was coming, and the
handbills it should contain, had waxed inordinately, and I felt I
could never eat a meal in peace till I had severed my connection
with the claret-coloured chaise.

Accordingly, as soon as I had done with dinner, I sent my
compliments to the landlord and requested he should take a glass of
wine with me.  He came; we exchanged the necessary civilities, and
presently I approached my business.

'By the bye,' said I, 'we had a brush down the road to-day.  I dare
say you may have heard of it?'

He nodded.

'And I was so unlucky as to get a pistol ball in the panel of my
chaise,' I continued, 'which makes it simply useless to me.  Do you
know any one likely to buy?'

'I can well understand that,' said the landlord, 'I was looking at
it just now; it's as good as ruined, is that chaise.  General rule,
people don't like chaises with bullet-holes.'

'Too much Romance of the Forest?' I suggested, recalling my little
friend of the morning, and what I was sure had been her favourite
reading--Mrs. Radcliffe's novels.

'Just so,' said he.  'They may be right, they may be wrong; I'm not
the judge.  But I suppose it's natural, after all, for respectable
people to like things respectable about them; not bullet-holes, nor
puddles of blood, nor men with aliases.'

I took a glass of wine and held it up to the light to show that my
hand was steady.

'Yes,' said I, 'I suppose so.'

'You have papers, of course, showing you are the proper owner?' he
inquired.

'There is the bill, stamped and receipted,' said I, tossing it
across to him.

He looked at it.

'This all you have?' he asked.

'It is enough, at least,' said I.  'It shows you where I bought and
what I paid for it.'

'Well, I don't know,' he said.  'You want some paper of
identification.'

'To identify the chaise?' I inquired.

'Not at all:  to identify YOU,' said he.

'My good sir, remember yourself!' said I.  'The title-deeds of my
estate are in that despatch-box; but you do not seriously suppose
that I should allow you to examine them?'

'Well, you see, this paper proves that some Mr. Ramornie paid
seventy guineas for a chaise,' said the fellow.  'That's all well
and good; but who's to prove to me that you are Mr. Ramornie?'

'Fellow!' cried I.

'O, fellow as much as you please!' said he.  'Fellow, with all my
heart!  That changes nothing.  I am fellow, of course--obtrusive
fellow, impudent fellow, if you like--but who are you?  I hear of
you with two names; I hear of you running away with young ladies,
and getting cheered for a Frenchman, which seems odd; and one thing
I will go bail for, that you were in a blue fright when the post-
boy began to tell tales at my door.  In short, sir, you may be a
very good gentleman; but I don't know enough about you, and I'll
trouble you for your papers, or to go before a magistrate.  Take
your choice; if I'm not fine enough, I hope the magistrates are.'

'My good man,' I stammered, for though I had found my voice, I
could scarce be said to have recovered my wits, 'this is most
unusual, most rude.  Is it the custom in Westmorland that gentlemen
should be insulted?'

'That depends,' said he.  'When it's suspected that gentlemen are
spies it IS the custom; and a good custom, too.  No no,' he broke
out, perceiving me to make a movement.  'Both hands upon the table,
my gentleman!  I want no pistol balls in my chaise panels.'

'Surely, sir, you do me strange injustice!' said I, now the master
of myself.  'You see me sitting here, a monument of tranquillity:
pray may I help myself to wine without umbraging you?'

I took this attitude in sheer despair.  I had no plan, no hope.
The best I could imagine was to spin the business out some minutes
longer, then capitulate.  At least, I would not capituatle one
moment too soon.

'Am I to take that for NO?' he asked.

'Referring to your former obliging proposal?' said I.  'My good
sir, you are to take it, as you say, for "No."  Certainly I will
not show you my deeds; certainly I will not rise from table and
trundle out to see your magistrates.  I have too much respect for
my digestion, and too little curiosity in justices of the peace.'

He leaned forward, looked me nearly in the face, and reached out
one hand to the bell-rope.  'See here, my fine fellow!' said he.
'Do you see that bell-rope?  Let me tell you, there's a boy waiting
below:  one jingle, and he goes to fetch the constable.'

'Do you tell me so?' said I.  'Well, there's no accounting for
tastes!  I have a prejudice against the society of constables, but
if it is your fancy to have one in for the dessert--'  I shrugged
my shoulders lightly.  'Really, you know,' I added, 'this is vastly
entertaining.  I assure you, I am looking on, with all the interest
of a man of the world, at the development of your highly original
character.'

He continued to study my face without speech, his hand still on the
button of the bell-rope, his eyes in mine; this was the decisive
heat.  My face seemed to myself to dislimn under his gaze, my
expression to change, the smile (with which I had began) to
degenerate into the grin of the man upon the rack.  I was besides
harassed with doubts.  An innocent man, I argued, would have
resented the fellow's impudence an hour ago; and by my continued
endurance of the ordeal, I was simply signing and sealing my
confession; in short, I had reached the end of my powers.

'Have you any objection to my putting my hands in my breeches
pockets?' I inquired.  'Excuse me mentioning it, but you showed
yourself so extremely nervous a moment back.'  My voice was not all
I could have wished, but it sufficed.  I could hear it tremble, but
the landlord apparently could not.  He turned away and drew a long
breath, and you may be sure I was quick to follow his example.

'You're a cool hand at least, and that's the sort I like,' said he.
'Be you what you please, I'll deal square.  I'll take the chaise
for a hundred pound down, and throw the dinner in.'

'I beg your pardon,' I cried, wholly mystified by this form of
words.

'You pay me a hundred down,' he repeated, 'and I'll take the
chaise.  It's very little more than it cost,' he added, with a
grin, 'and you know you must get it off your hands somehow.'

I do not know when I have been better entertained than by this
impudent proposal.  It was broadly funny, and I suppose the least
tempting offer in the world.  For all that, it came very welcome,
for it gave me the occasion to laugh.  This I did with the most
complete abandonment, till the tears ran down my cheeks; and ever
and again, as the fit abated, I would get another view of the
landlord's face, and go off into another paroxysm.

'You droll creature, you will be the death of me yet!' I cried,
drying my eyes.

My friend was now wholly disconcerted; he knew not where to look,
nor yet what to say; and began for the first time to conceive it
possible he was mistaken.

'You seem rather to enjoy a laugh, sir,' said he.

'O, yes!  I am quite an original,' I replied, and laughed again.

Presently, in a changed voice, he offered me twenty pounds for the
chaise; I ran him up to twenty-five, and closed with the offer:
indeed, I was glad to get anything; and if I haggled, it was not in
the desire of gain, but with the view at any price of securing a
safe retreat.  For although hostilities were suspended, he was yet
far from satisfied; and I could read his continued suspicions in
the cloudy eye that still hovered about my face.  At last they took
shape in words.

'This is all very well,' says he:  'you carry it off well; but for
all that, I must do my duty.'

I had my strong effect in reserve; it was to burn my ships with a
vengeance!  I rose.  'Leave the room,' said I.  'This is
insuperable.  Is the man mad?'  And then, as if already half-
ashamed of my passion:  'I can take a joke as well as any one,' I
added; 'but this passes measure.  Send my servant and the bill.'

When he had left me alone, I considered my own valour with
amazement.  I had insulted him; I had sent him away alone; now, if
ever, he would take what was the only sensible resource, and fetch
the constable.  But there was something instinctively treacherous
about the man which shrank from plain courses.  And, with all his
cleverness, he missed the occasion of fame.  Rowley and I were
suffered to walk out of his door, with all our baggage, on foot,
with no destination named, except in the vague statement that we
were come 'to view the lakes'; and my friend only watched our
departure with his chin in his hand, still moodily irresolute.

I think this one of my great successes.  I was exposed, unmasked,
summoned to do a perfectly natural act, which must prove my doom
and which I had not the slightest pretext for refusing.  I kept my
head, stuck to my guns, and, against all likelihood, here I was
once more at liberty and in the king's highway.  This was a strong
lesson never to despair; and, at the same time, how many hints to
be cautious! and what a perplexed and dubious business the whole
question of my escape now appeared!  That I should have risked
perishing upon a trumpery question of a pourboire, depicted in
lively colours the perils that perpetually surrounded us.  Though,
to be sure, the initial mistake had been committed before that; and
if I had not suffered myself to be drawn a little deep in
confidences to the innocent Dolly, there need have been no tumble
at the inn of Kirkby-Lonsdale.  I took the lesson to heart, and
promised myself in the future to be more reserved.  It was none of
my business to attend to broken chaises or shipwrecked travellers.
I had my hands full of my own affairs; and my best defence would be
a little more natural selfishness and a trifle less imbecile good-
nature.



CHAPTER XXV--I MEET A CHEERFUL EXTRAVAGANT



I pass over the next fifty or sixty leagues of our journey without
comment.  The reader must be growing weary of scenes of travel; and
for my own part I have no cause to recall these particular miles
with any pleasure.  We were mainly occupied with attempts to
obliterate our trail, which (as the result showed) were far from
successful; for, on my cousin following, he was able to run me home
with the least possible loss of time, following the claret-coloured
chaise to Kirkby-Lonsdale, where I think the landlord must have
wept to learn what he had missed, and tracing us thereafter to the
doors of the coach-office in Edinburgh without a single check.
Fortune did not favour me, and why should I recapitulate the
details of futile precautions which deceived nobody, and wearisome
arts which proved to be artless?

The day was drawing to an end when Mr. Rowley and I bowled into
Edinburgh to the stirring sound of the guard's bugle and the
clattering team.  I was here upon my field of battle; on the scene
of my former captivity, escape and exploits; and in the same city
with my love.  My heart expanded; I have rarely felt more of a
hero.  All down the Bridges I sat by the driver with my arms folded
and my face set, unflinchingly meeting every eye, and prepared
every moment for a cry of recognition.  Hundreds of the population
were in the habit of visiting the Castle, where it was my practice
(before the days of Flora) to make myself conspicuous among the
prisoners; and I think it an extraordinary thing that I should have
encountered so few to recognise me.  But doubtless a clean chin is
a disguise in itself; and the change is great from a suit of
sulphur-yellow to fine linen, a well-fitting mouse-coloured great-
coat furred in black, a pair of tight trousers of fashionable cut,
and a hat of inimitable curl.  After all, it was more likely that I
should have recognised our visitors, than that they should have
identified the modish gentleman with the miserable prisoner in the
Castle.

I was glad to set foot on the flagstones, and to escape from the
crowd that had assembled to receive the mail.  Here we were, with
but little daylight before us, and that on Saturday afternoon, the
eve of the famous Scottish Sabbath, adrift in the New Town of
Edinburgh, and overladen with baggage.  We carried it ourselves.  I
would not take a cab, nor so much as hire a porter, who might
afterwards serve as a link between my lodgings and the mail, and
connect me again with the claret-coloured chaise and Aylesbury.
For I was resolved to break the chain of evidence for good, and to
begin life afresh (so far as regards caution) with a new character.
The first step was to find lodgings, and to find them quickly.
This was the more needful as Mr. Rowley and I, in our smart clothes
and with our cumbrous burthen, made a noticeable appearance in the
streets at that time of the day and in that quarter of the town,
which was largely given up to fine folk, bucks and dandies and
young ladies, or respectable professional men on their way home to
dinner.

On the north side of St. James' Square I was so happy as to spy a
bill in a third-floor window.  I was equally indifferent to cost
and convenience in my choice of a lodging--'any port in a storm'
was the principle on which I was prepared to act; and Rowley and I
made at once for the common entrance and sealed the stair.

We were admitted by a very sour-looking female in bombazine.  I
gathered she had all her life been depressed by a series of
bereavements, the last of which might very well have befallen her
the day before; and I instinctively lowered my voice when I
addressed her.  She admitted she had rooms to let--even showed them
to us--a sitting-room and bedroom in a suite, commanding a fine
prospect to the Firth and Fifeshire, and in themselves well
proportioned and comfortably furnished, with pictures on the wall,
shells on the mantelpiece, and several books upon the table which I
found afterwards to be all of a devotional character, and all
presentation copies, 'to my Christian friend,' or 'to my devout
acquaintance in the Lord, Bethiah McRankine.'  Beyond this my
'Christian friend' could not be made to advance:  no, not even to
do that which seemed the most natural and pleasing thing in the
world--I mean to name her price--but stood before us shaking her
head, and at times mourning like the dove, the picture of
depression and defence.  She had a voice the most querulous I have
ever heard, and with this she produced a whole regiment of
difficulties and criticisms.

She could not promise an attendance.

'Well, madam,' said I, 'and what is my servant for?'

'Him?' she asked.  'Be gude to us!  Is HE your servant?'

'I am sorry, ma'am, he meets with your disapproval.'

'Na, I never said that.  But he's young.  He'll be a great breaker,
I'm thinkin'.  Ay! he'll be a great responsibeelity to ye, like.
Does he attend to his releegion?'

'Yes, m'm,' returned Rowley, with admirable promptitude, and,
immediately closing his eyes, as if from habit, repeated the
following distich with more celerity than fervour:-


'Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
Bless the bed that I lie on!'


'Nhm!' said the lady, and maintained an awful silence.

'Well, ma'am,' said I, 'it seems we are never to hear the beginning
of your terms, let alone the end of them.  Come--a good movement!
and let us be either off or on.'

She opened her lips slowly.  'Ony raferences?' she inquired, in a
voice like a bell.

I opened my pocket-book and showed her a handful of bank bills.  'I
think, madam, that these are unexceptionable,' said I.

'Ye'll be wantin' breakfast late?' was her reply.

'Madam, we want breakfast at whatever hour it suits you to give it,
from four in the morning till four in the afternoon!' I cried.
'Only tell us your figure, if your mouth be large enough to let it
out!'

'I couldnae give ye supper the nicht,' came the echo.

'We shall go out to supper, you incorrigible female!' I vowed,
between laughter and tears.  'Here--this is going to end!  I want
you for a landlady--let me tell you that!--and I am going to have
my way.  You won't tell me what you charge?  Very well; I will do
without!  I can trust you!  You don't seem to know when you have a
good lodger; but I know perfectly when I have an honest landlady!
Rowley, unstrap the valises!'

Will it be credited?  The monomaniac fell to rating me for my
indiscretion!  But the battle was over; these were her last guns,
and more in the nature of a salute than of renewed hostilities.
And presently she condescended on very moderate terms, and Rowley
and I were able to escape in quest of supper.  Much time had,
however, been lost; the sun was long down, the lamps glimmered
along the streets, and the voice of a watchman already resounded in
the neighbouring Leith Road.  On our first arrival I had observed a
place of entertainment not far off, in a street behind the Register
House.  Thither we found our way, and sat down to a late dinner
alone.  But we had scarce given our orders before the door opened,
and a tall young fellow entered with something of a lurch, looked
about him, and approached the same table.

'Give you good evening, most grave and reverend seniors!' said he.
'Will you permit a wanderer, a pilgrim--the pilgrim of love, in
short--to come to temporary anchor under your lee?  I care not who
knows it, but I have a passionate aversion from the bestial
practice of solitary feeding!'

'You are welcome, sir,' said I, 'if I may take upon me so far to
play the host in a public place.'

He looked startled, and fixed a hazy eye on me, as he sat down.

'Sir,' said he, 'you are a man not without some tincture of
letters, I perceive!  What shall we drink, sir?'

I mentioned I had already called for a pot of porter.

'A modest pot--the seasonable quencher?' said he.  'Well, I do not
know but what I could look at a modest pot myself!  I am, for the
moment, in precarious health.  Much study hath heated my brain,
much walking wearied my--well, it seems to be more my eyes!'

'You have walked far, I dare say?' I suggested.

'Not so much far as often,' he replied.  'There is in this city--to
which, I think, you are a stranger?  Sir, to your very good health
and our better acquaintance!--there is, in this city of Dunedin, a
certain implication of streets which reflects the utmost credit on
the designer and the publicans--at every hundred yards is seated
the Judicious Tavern, so that persons of contemplative mind are
secure, at moderate distances, of refreshment.  I have been doing a
trot in that favoured quarter, favoured by art and nature.  A few
chosen comrades--enemies of publicity and friends to wit and wine--
obliged me with their society.  "Along the cool, sequestered vale
of Register Street we kept the uneven tenor of our way," sir.'

'It struck me, as you came in--' I began.

'O, don't make any bones about it!' he interrupted.  'Of course it
struck you! and let me tell you I was devilish lucky not to strike
myself.  When I entered this apartment I shone "with all the pomp
and prodigality of brandy and water," as the poet Gray has in
another place expressed it.  Powerful bard, Gray! but a niminy-
piminy creature, afraid of a petticoat and a bottle--not a man,
sir, not a man!  Excuse me for being so troublesome, but what the
devil have I done with my fork?  Thank you, I am sure.  Temulentia,
quoad me ipsum, brevis colligo est.  I sit and eat, sir, in a
London fog.  I should bring a link-boy to table with me; and I
would too, if the little brutes were only washed!  I intend to
found a Philanthropical Society for Washing the Deserving Poor and
Shaving Soldiers.  I am pleased to observe that, although not of an
unmilitary bearing, you are apparently shaved.  In my calendar of
the virtues shaving comes next to drinking.  A gentleman may be a
low-minded ruffian without sixpence, but he will always be close
shaved.  See me, with the eye of fancy, in the chill hours of the
morning, say about a quarter to twelve, noon--see me awake!  First
thing of all, without one thought of the plausible but
unsatisfactory small beer, or the healthful though insipid soda-
water, I take the deadly razor in my vacillating grasp; I proceed
to skate upon the margin of eternity.  Stimulating thought!  I
bleed, perhaps, but with medicable wounds.  The stubble reaped, I
pass out of my chamber, calm but triumphant.  To employ a hackneyed
phrase, I would not call Lord Wellington my uncle!  I, too, have
dared, perhaps bled, before the imminent deadly shaving-table.'

In this manner the bombastic fellow continued to entertain me all
through dinner, and by a common error of drunkards, because he had
been extremely talkative himself, leaped to the conclusion that he
had chanced on very genial company.  He told me his name, his
address; he begged we should meet again; finally he proposed that I
should dine with him in the country at an early date.

'The dinner is official,' he explained.  'The office-bearers and
Senatus of the University of Cramond--an educational institution in
which I have the honour to be Professor of Nonsense--meet to do
honour to our friend Icarus, at the old-established howff, Cramond
Bridge.  One place is vacant, fascinating stranger,--I offer it to
you!'

'And who is your friend Icarus?' I asked,

'The aspiring son of Daedalus!' said he.  'Is it possible that you
have never heard the name of Byfield?'

'Possible and true,' said I.

'And is fame so small a thing?' cried he.  'Byfield, sir, is an
aeronaut.  He apes the fame of a Lunardi, and is on the point of
offering to the inhabitants--I beg your pardon, to the nobility and
gentry of our neighbourhood--the spectacle of an ascension.  As one
of the gentry concerned I may be permitted to remark that I am
unmoved.  I care not a Tinker's Damn for his ascension.  No more--I
breathe it in your ear--does anybody else.  The business is stale,
sir, stale.  Lunardi did it, and overdid it.  A whimsical,
fiddling, vain fellow, by all accounts--for I was at that time
rocking in my cradle.  But once was enough.  If Lunardi went up and
came down, there was the matter settled.  We prefer to grant the
point.  We do not want to see the experiment repeated ad nauseam by
Byfield, and Brown, and Butler, and Brodie, and Bottomley.  Ah! if
they would go up and NOT come down again!  But this is by the
question.  The University of Cramond delights to honour merit in
the man, sir, rather than utility in the profession; and Byfield,
though an ignorant dog, is a sound reliable drinker, and really not
amiss over his cups.  Under the radiance of the kindly jar
partiality might even credit him with wit.'

It will be seen afterwards that this was more my business than I
thought it at the time.  Indeed, I was impatient to be gone.  Even
as my friend maundered ahead a squall burst, the jaws of the rain
were opened against the coffee-house windows, and at that inclement
signal I remembered I was due elsewhere.



CHAPTER XXVI--THE COTTAGE AT NIGHT



At the door I was nearly blown back by the unbridled violence of
the squall, and Rowley and I must shout our parting words.  All the
way along Princes Street (whither my way led) the wind hunted me
behind and screamed in my ears.  The city was flushed with
bucketfuls of rain that tasted salt from the neighbouring ocean.
It seemed to darken and lighten again in the vicissitudes of the
gusts.  Now you would say the lamps had been blown out from end to
end of the long thoroughfare; now, in a lull, they would revive,
re-multiply, shine again on the wet pavements, and make darkness
sparingly visible.

By the time I had got to the corner of the Lothian Road there was a
distinct improvement.  For one thing, I had now my shoulder to the
wind; for a second, I came in the lee of my old prison-house, the
Castle; and, at any rate, the excessive fury of the blast was
itself moderating.  The thought of what errand I was on re-awoke
within me, and I seemed to breast the rough weather with increasing
ease.  With such a destination, what mattered a little buffeting of
wind or a sprinkle of cold water?  I recalled Flora's image, I took
her in fancy to my arms, and my heart throbbed.  And the next
moment I had recognised the inanity of that fool's paradise.  If I
could spy her taper as she went to bed, I might count myself lucky.

I had about two leagues before me of a road mostly uphill, and now
deep in mire.  So soon as I was clear of the last street lamp,
darkness received me--a darkness only pointed by the lights of
occasional rustic farms, where the dogs howled with uplifted heads
as I went by.  The wind continued to decline:  it had been but a
squall, not a tempest.  The rain, on the other hand, settled into a
steady deluge, which had soon drenched me thoroughly.  I continued
to tramp forward in the night, contending with gloomy thoughts and
accompanied by the dismal ululation of the dogs.  What ailed them
that they should have been thus wakeful, and perceived the small
sound of my steps amid the general reverberation of the rain, was
more than I could fancy.  I remembered tales with which I had been
entertained in childhood.  I told myself some murderer was going
by, and the brutes perceived upon him the faint smell of blood; and
the next moment, with a physical shock, I had applied the words to
my own case!