s.

Troubles are like laudanum, a small dose only excites, a strong one sets
you to sleep--not a very comfortable sleep mayhap--but still it is sleep,
and often very sound sleep; so it now happened with me. I had pondered
over, weighed, and considered all the pros, cons, turnings, and windings
of this awkward predicament, till I had fairly convinced myself that I
was on the high road to a confounded scrape; and then, having established
that fact to my entire satisfaction, I fell comfortably back in the
chaise, and sunk into a most profound slumber.

If to any of my readers I may appear here to have taken a very despondent
view of this whole affair, let him only call to mind my invariable ill
luck in such matters, and how always it had been my lot to see myself on
the fair road to success, only up to that point at which it is certain,
besides--but why explain? These are my confessions. I may not alter
what are matters of fact, and my reader must only take me with all the
imperfections of wrong motives and headlong impulses upon my head, or
abandon me at once.

Meanwhile the chaise rolled along, and the road being better and the pace
faster, my sleep became more easy; thus, about an hour and a half after I
had fallen asleep, passed rapidly over, when the sharp turning of an
angle distended me from my leaning position, and I awoke. I started up
and rubbed my eyes; several seconds elapsed before I could think where I
was or whither going. Consciousness at last came, and I perceived that
we were driving up a thickly planted avenue. Why, confound it, they
can't have mistaken it, thought I, or are we really going up to the
house, instead of waiting at the lodge? I at once lowered the sash, and
stretching out my head, cried out, "Do you know what ye are about, lads;
is this all right?" but unfortunately, amid the rattling of the gravel
and the clatter of the horses, my words were unheard; and thinking I was
addressing a request to go faster, the villains cracked their whips, and
breaking into a full gallop, before five minutes flew over, they drew up
with a jerk at the foot of a long portico to a large and spacious
cut-stone mansion. When I rallied from the sudden check, which had nearly
thrown me through the window, I gave myself up for lost: here I was vis a
vis to the very hall-door of the man whose daughter I was about to elope
with, whether so placed by the awkwardness and blundering of the wretches
who drove me,