you luck with the fair Clara--not
that you'll see her--old Vernor will take care of that somehow or other;
even if he's not at home, he'll have locked her up safely before he went
out, depend upon it."

"You do not mean that in sober earnest?" said I.

"Perhaps not actually in fact," replied Freddy, "but in effect I believe
he does. Clara tells Lucy she never sees any one."

"She shall see me to-day, if I can possibly contrive it," said I. "Oh
for the good old days of chivalry, when knocking the guardian on the
head, and running away with the imprisoned damsel afterwards, would
have been accounted a very moral and gentlemanlike way of spending the
morning!"

"Certainly, they had a pleasant knack of simplifying matters, 'those
knights of old,'" replied Freddy; "but it's not a line of business that
would have suited me at all; in balancing their accounts, the kicks
always appear to have obtained a very uncomfortable preponderance over
the halfpence; besides, the _causa belli_ was a point on which their
ideas were generally in a deplorable state of confusion: when one kills
a man, it's as well to have some slight notion _why_ one does it; and
the case comes home to one still more closely if it's somebody else
who's going to kill you."

"You're about right there, Master Freddy," said I, smiling as I shook
hands with him, and quitted the house. %

CHAPTER XVII -- THE INVISIBLE GIRL

~145~~

"Aye, that's a dolt indeed, for he doth nothing but talk of
his horse."
--_Merchant of Venice_.

"Yond young fellow swears he will speak with you. What's
to be said to him? He's fortified against any denial."
--_Twelfth Night_.

"Be subject to no sight but mine; invisible
To every eyeball else."
--_Tempest_.

ON arriving at the inn, to which I was forced to return to order my
horse, I perceived Lawless's tandem waiting at the door, surrounded by
a crowd of admiring rustics, with Shrimp, his arms folded with an air of
nonchalant defiance, which seemed to say, "Oh! run over me by all means
if you choose," stationed directly in front of the leader's head. On
entering the parlour I found Lawless busily engaged in pulling on a pair
of refractory boots, and looking very hot and red in the face from the
exertion.

"How are you, Fairlegh? how are you? That stupid fool has made 'em too
tight for anybody but Tom Thumb, and be hanged to