. I kept my liberty and life by my
proficiency all these months, and for once that I failed, it is not to
be supposed that I would make a public exhibition of the details. Enough
that it was a very little error, and one that might have passed
ninety-nine times in a hundred. But my limb of the law was as swift to
pick it up as though he had been by trade a master of languages.

"Aha!" cries he; "and you are French too! Your tongue bewrays you. Two
Frenchmen coming into an alehouse, severally and accidentally, not
knowing each other, at ten of the clock at night, in the middle of
Bedfordshire? No, sir, that shall not pass! You are all prisoners
escaping, if you are nothing worse. Consider yourselves under arrest. I
have to trouble you for your papers."

"Where is your warrant, if you come to that?" said I. "My papers! A
likely thing that I would show my papers on the _ipse dixit_ of an
unknown fellow in a hedge alehouse!"

"Would you resist the law?" says he.

"Not the law, sir!" said I. "I hope I am too good a subject for that.
But for a nameless fellow with a bald head and a pair of gingham
small-clothes, why certainly! 'Tis my birthright as an Englishman.
Where's _Magna Charta_ else?"

"We will see about that," says he; and then, addressing the assistants,
"Where does the constable live?"

"Lord love you, sir!" cried the landlord, "what are you thinking of? The
constable at past ten at night! Why, he's abed and asleep, and good and
drunk two hours agone!"

"Ah that a' be!" came in chorus from the yokels.

The attorney's clerk was put to a stand. He could not think of force;
there was little sign of martial ardour about the landlord, and the
peasants were indifferent--they only listened, and gaped, and now
scratched a head, and now would get a light to their pipes from the
embers on the hearth. On the other hand, the Major and I put a bold
front on the business and defied him, not without some ground of law. In
this state of matters he proposed I should go along with him to one
Squire Merton, a great man of the neighbourhood, who was in the
commission of the peace, the end of his avenue but three lanes away. I
told him I would not stir a foot for him if it were to save his soul.
Next he proposed I should stay all night where I was, and the constable
could see to my affair in the morning, when he was sober. I replied I
should go when and where I pleased; that we were lawful travellers in
the fear of God and the