th a few other little tokens of the playful
disposition of the many-headed.

How long this scene might have lasted, or how much Mr. Pickwick might
have suffered, no one can tell, had not a carriage, which was driving
swiftly by, suddenly pulled up, from whence there descended old Wardle
and Sam Weller, the former of whom, in far less time than it takes to
write it, if not to read it, had made his way to Mr. Pickwick's side,
and placed him in the vehicle, just as the latter had concluded the
third and last round of a single combat with the town-beadle.

'Run to the justice's!' cried a dozen voices.

'Ah, run avay,' said Mr. Weller, jumping up on the box. 'Give my
compliments--Mr. Veller's compliments--to the justice, and tell him I've
spiled his beadle, and that, if he'll swear in a new 'un, I'll come back
again to-morrow and spile him. Drive on, old feller.'

'I'll give directions for the commencement of an action for false
imprisonment against this Captain Boldwig, directly I get to London,'
said Mr. Pickwick, as soon as the carriage turned out of the town.

'We were trespassing, it seems,' said Wardle.

'I don't care,' said Mr. Pickwick, 'I'll bring the action.'

'No, you won't,' said Wardle.

'I will, by--' But as there was a humorous expression in Wardle's face,
Mr. Pickwick checked himself, and said, 'Why not?'

'Because,' said old Wardle, half-bursting with laughter, 'because they
might turn on some of us, and say we had taken too much cold punch.'

Do what he would, a smile would come into Mr. Pickwick's face; the smile
extended into a laugh; the laugh into a roar; the roar became general.
So, to keep up their good-humour, they stopped at the first roadside
tavern they came to, and ordered a glass of brandy-and-water all round,
with a magnum of extra strength for Mr. Samuel Weller.

CHAPTER XX. SHOWING HOW DODSON AND FOGG WERE MEN OF BUSINESS, AND
THEIR CLERKS MEN OF PLEASURE; AND HOW AN AFFECTING INTERVIEW TOOK PLACE
BETWEEN Mr. WELLER AND HIS LONG-LOST PARENT; SHOWING ALSO WHAT CHOICE
SPIRITS ASSEMBLED AT THE MAGPIE AND STUMP, AND WHAT A CAPITAL CHAPTER
THE NEXT ONE WILL BE

In the ground-floor front of a dingy house, at the very farthest end of
Freeman's Court, Cornhill, sat the four clerks of Messrs. Dodson & Fogg,
two of his Majesty's attorneys of the courts of King's Bench and Common
Pleas at Westminster, and solicitors of the High Court of Chancery--the
aforesaid clerks catching as favou