ed up at the old Maypole, it might be for the last time.

He didn't apostrophise it, for he was no great scholar. He didn't curse
it, for he had little ill-will to give to anything on earth. He felt
more affectionate and kind to it than ever he had done in all his life
before, so said with all his heart, 'God bless you!' as a parting wish,
and turned away.

He walked along at a brisk pace, big with great thoughts of going for
a soldier and dying in some foreign country where it was very hot and
sandy, and leaving God knows what unheard-of wealth in prize-money to
Dolly, who would be very much affected when she came to know of it;
and full of such youthful visions, which were sometimes sanguine and
sometimes melancholy, but always had her for their main point and
centre, pushed on vigorously until the noise of London sounded in his
ears, and the Black Lion hove in sight.

It was only eight o'clock then, and very much astonished the Black Lion
was, to see him come walking in with dust upon his feet at that early
hour, with no grey mare to bear him company. But as he ordered breakfast
to be got ready with all speed, and on its being set before him gave
indisputable tokens of a hearty appetite, the Lion received him, as
usual, with a hospitable welcome; and treated him with those marks
of distinction, which, as a regular customer, and one within the
freemasonry of the trade, he had a right to claim.

This Lion or landlord,--for he was called both man and beast, by reason
of his having instructed the artist who painted his sign, to convey
into the features of the lordly brute whose effigy it bore, as near a
counterpart of his own face as his skill could compass and devise,--was
a gentleman almost as quick of apprehension, and of almost as subtle a
wit, as the mighty John himself. But the difference between them lay in
this: that whereas Mr Willet's extreme sagacity and acuteness were
the efforts of unassisted nature, the Lion stood indebted, in no small
amount, to beer; of which he swigged such copious draughts, that most of
his faculties were utterly drowned and washed away, except the one
great faculty of sleep, which he retained in surprising perfection.
The creaking Lion over the house-door was, therefore, to say the
truth, rather a drowsy, tame, and feeble lion; and as these social
representatives of a savage class are usually of a conventional
character (being depicted, for the most part, in impossible attitudes
an