ce, who had thus
presumed to disturb her slumbers. "Is it not enough that you have eloped
from my bed and board, for a long night, but you must dare to break in on
the natural rest of a whole family, seven blessed children, without
counting their mother! O Hector! Hector! an example are you getting to be
to the young and giddy, and a warning will you yet prove to the
unthoughtful!"

"Bring hither the black book," said the publican to his wife, who had been
drawn to a window by the lamentations of Desire; "I think the woman said
something about starting on a journey between two days; and, if such has
been the philosophy of the good-man, it behoves all honest people to look
into their accounts. Ay, as I live, Keziah, you have let the limping
beggar get seventeen and sixpence into arrears, and that for such trifles
as morning-drams and night-caps!"

"You are wrathy, friend, without reason; the man has made a garment for
the boy at school, and found the"--

"Hush, good woman," interrupted her husband returning the book, and
making a sign for her to retire; "I dare say it will all come round in
proper Time, and the less noise we make about the backslidings of a
neighbour, the less will be said of our own transgressions. A worthy and
hard-working mechanic, sir," he continued, addressing the stranger "but a
man who could never get the sun to shine in at his windows, though, Heaven
knows, the glass is none too thick for such a blessing."

"And do you imagine on evidence as slight as this we have seen, that such
a man has actually absconded?"

"Why, it is a calamity that has befallen his betters!" returned the
publican, interlocking his fingers across the rotundity of his person,
with an air of grave consideration. "We inn-keepers--who live, as it were,
in plain sight of every man's secrets; for it is after a visit to us that
one is apt truly to open his heart--should know something of the affairs
of a neighbourhood. If the good-man Homespun could smooth down the temper
of his companion as easily as he lays a seam into its place, the thing
might not occur, but----Do you drink this morning, sir?"

"A drop of your best."

"As I was saying," continued the other, while he furnished his customer,
according to his desire, "if a tailor's goose would take the wrinkles out
of the ruffled temper of a woman, as it does out of the cloth; and then,
if, after it had done this task, a man might eat it, as he would yonder
bird hanging b