nd
shut his shop with his own hands every day, not even excepting one. The
result of this steadiness and attention to business was, as has been
already said, a competency.

Fortunately for Johnny, this propensity to stick fast--which he did like
a limpet--was natural to him. It was a part of his constitution. He had
no desire whatever to travel, or, rather, he had a positive dislike to
it--a dislike, indeed, which was so great that, for an entire quarter of
a century, he had never been three miles out of Carlisle. But when
Johnny had waxed pretty rich, somewhat corpulent, and rather oldish, he
was suddenly struck, one fine summer afternoon, as he stood at the door
of his shop with his hands in his breeches pockets, (a favourite
attitude,) with an amiable and ardent desire to see certain of his
relations who lived at Brechin, in the north of Scotland; and--there is
no accounting for these things--on that afternoon Johnny came to the
extraordinary resolution of paying them a visit--of performing a journey
of upwards of a hundred miles, even as the crow flies. It was a strange
and a desperate resolution for a man of Johnny's peculiar temperament
and habits; but so it was. Travel he would, and travel he did. On the
third day after the doughty determination just alluded to had been
formed, Johnny, swathed in an ample brown greatcoat, with a red
comforter about his neck, appeared in the stable yard of the inn where
most of the stage coaches that passed through Carlisle put up. Of these
there were three: one for Dumfries, one for Glasgow, and one for
Edinburgh--the latter being Johnny's coach; for his route was by the
metropolis. We had almost forgotten to say that Johnny, who was a
widower, was accompanied on this occasion by his son, Johnny junior, an
only child, whom it was his intention to take along with him. The boy
was about fourteen years of age, and though, upon the whole, a shrewd
enough lad for his time of life, did not promise to be a much brighter
genius than his father. In fact he was rather lumpish.

On arriving at the inn yard--it was about eight o'clock at night, and
pretty dark, being the latter end of September--Johnny Armstrong found
the coach apparently about to start, the horses being all yoked; but the
vehicle happened, at the moment he entered the yard, to be in charge of
an ostler--not of either the guard or driver, who had both gone out of
the way for an instant. Desirous of securing a good seat for