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I'll see the rest of these good gentry to-morrow, said my father, as we cross'd over the square And while you are paying that visit, brother Shandy, quoth my uncle Toby the corporal and I will mount the ramparts. Sligniac has lent me, and where I now sit rhapsodising all these affairs. Let me collect myself, and pursue my journey.
"I was passing from the States on the sea-shore into these far regions, when I cross'd the trail of his army, and I fell in, on his rear, just as a looker-on; but when they got to blows, the crack of my rifle was heard among the rest, though to my shame it may be said, I never knew the right of the quarrel as well as a man of threescore and ten should know the reason of his acts afore he takes mortal life, which is a gift he never can return!"
That the beds we were to lie in were in one and the same room, was enough simply by itself to have excited all this; but the position of them, for they stood parallel, and so very close to each other as only to allow space for a small wicker chair betwixt them, rendered the affair still more oppressive to us; they were fixed up moreover near the fire; and the projection of the chimney on one side, and a large beam which cross'd the room on the other, formed a kind of recess for them that was no way favourable to the nicety of our sensations: if anything could have added to it, it was that the two beds were both of them so very small, as to cut us off from every idea of the lady and the maid lying together; which in either of them, could it have been feasible, my lying beside them, though a thing not to be wish'd, yet there was nothing in it so terrible which the imagination might not have pass'd over without torment.
"Why, a Scotch sort of a gentleman, as I said before," returned mine host; "they are all gentle, ye mun know, though they ha' narra shirt to back; but this is a decentish hallion a canny North Briton as e'er cross'd Berwick Bridge I trow he's a dealer in cattle."
They howl, and answer: Faithful she is, but she forsakes: And fond, yet endless woe she makes: And fair! but with this curse she's cross'd; To know her not till she is lost! "Then the doleful party march off in single file solemnly, and the fabulist pursues: 'She hath a palace in the West: Bright Hesper lights her to her rest: And him the Morning Star awakes Whom to her charmed arms she takes.
By this time, we had come down to the road: and the yells were still going on, louder than ever. We cross'd the road, descended another slope, and came all at once on a low pile of buildings that a moment before had been hid. 'Twas but three hovels of mud, stuck together in the shape of a headless cross, the main arm pointing out toward the moor.
As the ray touch'd the outer wall, I mark'd a small postern gate there, standing open. Cowering lower, we waited while a man might count fifty. Then came footsteps crunching the gravel, and a couple of men cross'd the path, bearing a large chest between them. In the light I saw the handle of a spade sticking out from it: and by his gait I knew the second man to be my one-ey'd friend.
"In ten minutes," said I, "we may be safe." To what had the summoning drums and trumpets led me? Where was the new life, then so carelessly prevented? But two days had gone, and here was I running to Joan for help, as a child to his mother. Past the peat-ricks we struggled, the sheep-cotes, the straggling fences all so familiar; cross'd the stream and rode into the yard.
As I cross'd leisurely for an hour in the pleasant night-scene, my young friend's words brought up quite a string of reminiscences. I commenced when I was but a boy of eleven or twelve writing sentimental bits for the old "Long Island Patriot," in Brooklyn; this was about 1832. Soon after, I had a piece or two in George P. Morris's then celebrated and fashionable "Mirror," of New York city.
What, one would think, doth seek to slay outright, Ofttimes delivers from the saddest plight. That very providence, whose face is death, Doth ofttimes to the lowly life bequeath. I taken was, he did escape and flee; Hands cross'd gives death to him, and life to me. Now, about this time, Matthew and Mercy were married.
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