-topped windows projecting completely over the pathway, and a low
door with a dark porch, and a couple of steep steps leading down into
the house, instead of the modern fashion of half a dozen shallow ones
leading up to it. It was a comfortable-looking place though, for there
was a strong, cheerful light in the bar window, which shed a bright ray
across the road, and even lighted up the hedge on the other side; and
there was a red flickering light in the opposite window, one moment but
faintly discernible, and the next gleaming strongly through the drawn
curtains, which intimated that a rousing fire was blazing within.
Marking these little evidences with the eye of an experienced traveller,
Tom dismounted with as much agility as his half-frozen limbs would
permit, and entered the house.

'In less than five minutes' time, Tom was ensconced in the room opposite
the bar--the very room where he had imagined the fire blazing--before a
substantial, matter-of-fact, roaring fire, composed of something short
of a bushel of coals, and wood enough to make half a dozen decent
gooseberry bushes, piled half-way up the chimney, and roaring and
crackling with a sound that of itself would have warmed the heart of
any reasonable man. This was comfortable, but this was not all; for a
smartly-dressed girl, with a bright eye and a neat ankle, was laying a
very clean white cloth on the table; and as Tom sat with his slippered
feet on the fender, and his back to the open door, he saw a charming
prospect of the bar reflected in the glass over the chimney-piece, with
delightful rows of green bottles and gold labels, together with jars of
pickles and preserves, and cheeses and boiled hams, and rounds of beef,
arranged on shelves in the most tempting and delicious array. Well, this
was comfortable too; but even this was not all--for in the bar, seated
at tea at the nicest possible little table, drawn close up before the
brightest possible little fire, was a buxom widow of somewhere about
eight-and-forty or thereabouts, with a face as comfortable as the bar,
who was evidently the landlady of the house, and the supreme ruler over
all these agreeable possessions. There was only one drawback to the
beauty of the whole picture, and that was a tall man--a very tall
man--in a brown coat and bright basket buttons, and black whiskers
and wavy black hair, who was seated at tea with the widow, and who
it required no great penetration to discover was in a fai