OR, THE STAGE, THE ARMY, AND THE LAW.
"It's a bad night, sir, "said my host of the —, to me, as I mounted my horse intent on reaching London. "You'll hardly make town to-night, through such weather; you'd better let me put the beast up, and take a bed here, sir."
"No, no, I thank you," I said; "the night's bad enough, but I'll try the road again."
"You'll find it a bad one, sir; and ten to one but the waters are out, and the way flooded, or the Dart would have been here before this; let me persuade you, sir."
"Your liquor, good friend," I answered, "would be a better persuasion than your words, if any thing could prevail, but I must on;" and, that said, I wished him a good night, and giving the reins a jerk, pushed homewards at a smart trot. It was, truly, a dismal night, and as an Irish friend of mine said of a similar one, "every hour it improved momentarily for the worse,""till the rain blew in my face in clouds; the road was swamped, the wind roared, whistled, and howled, the thunder growled, and the lightning played about my stirrup irons, or flashed on me the brightness of day, and then left me in almost chaotic darkness. I had not proceeded two miles, when I began very grievously to repent me of my obdurate refusal of my host's hospitality; but false shame, that sister of sin and folly, prevented me from turning my horse's head, and seeking the shelter I had left: meanwhile, every step I advanced, the storm came on more and more fiercely, till it amounted to a hurricane, and the horse could scarcely proceed for the violence of the wind, which almost shook me from the saddle, and the water, which already reached over his fetlocks; so that it was with no little pleasure that, after beating five miles through the tempest, my eye caught a glimmer of light, which played through the crevices in the shutters of a post-house, on moor. Thoroughly drenched, even to the innermost cuticle of my skin, I gladly drew up at the door, and committing my quadruped companion (no less anxious than myself to shelter his head) to the care of the landlord, I made a dart into the house, and quickly ensconced myself into the farthest corner of the kitchen-settle; a small knapsack, unbuckled from my saddle, furnished me with dry stockings, linen, and trousers, to which the landlord, in his charity, adding a smock frock, I was soon as comfortable as a bishop, and at much less expense. A cigar, and a mug of punch brewed by my own hands, together with the assurance of a bed, a luxury which under worse circumstances I have often been compelled to dispense with, completed the measure of my felicity, and I blessed my stars for having secured me such a haven. "A very bad night, sir," said somebody, as I set down my tumbler, after a most plebeian libation. Now, the donning of the frock and the compounding of the punch, at I had so engrossed me, that I had not perceived the other chimney-corner was occupied by a jolly, genteel, demi-rotund, red-faced, dapper little man; and as
I assented to the remark, I apologized to him for not
having noticed him before. "Don't mention it, sir,"
he said; "but you've had a taste of the weather,
though," &c. &c. &c. And so we common-placed in
a very neighbourly fashion, till a rumble was heard
at the door, and presently a stranger presented him-
self, to share the comforts of a roof, and a blazing
coal and log fire. He was tall, of an erect figure,
and wore a large blue cloak, from which, and
from his somewhat stiff carriage, I gathered that he
was an army man.
"A most infernal night, this, gentlemen," said he,
approaching the fire, "Here, landlord, I can sleep here, I suppose?"
"We have one spare bed, sir."
"That will do." He soon after proceeded to his room to change his clothes. Immediately afterward, another coach stopped at the door, and while it was rattling past the window, off again, a tall, spare man, with an affected gait, savouring of pomp and ease, strode up to the fire, with an old portmanteau in his hand, and bowing lightly to me and my fellow-inmate of the chimney as he approached, spread his legs before the fire, took off his hat, shook the exterior wet, which could find no further room in or under his worn surtout, from off it, by a jerk of his shoulders, and spread his benumbed fingers, first relieved from the embraces of a pair of white-worn black kid gloves. over the blaze. "A bad might, gentlemen; but you seem, fortunately, tolerably dry—travelled inside, I presume—safest way—I generally do mysels—variable climate ours—you had better draw nearer the "Don't trouble yourself, sir," said the soldier, who had just re-entered, "you are more in need of its warmth than we are; I have just changed." "Oh, indeed, fortunate for you that you travelled with a change—the safest way—I generally do myself; but the fact is, I am an humble and unworthy member of the histrionic profession—a manager—and not contemplating this sudden resolve of the weather, I had sent my wardrobe on with my company to ."
