morning occasioned our arriving
some time after this hour, to the Justice the most important of the
four-and-twenty, and he had not neglected the interval.

"Stay you here," said Diana. "I know the house, and I will call a
servant; your sudden appearance might startle the old gentleman even to
choking;" and she escaped from me, leaving me uncertain whether I ought
to advance or retreat. It was impossible for me not to hear some part of
what passed within the dinner apartment, and particularly several
apologies for declining to sing, expressed in a dejected croaking voice,
the tones of which, I conceived, were not entirely new to me.

"Not sing, sir? by our Lady! but you must--What! you have cracked my
silver-mounted cocoa-nut of sack, and tell me that you cannot sing!--Sir,
sack will make a cat sing, and speak too; so up with a merry stave, or
trundle yourself out of my doors!--Do you think you are to take up all my
valuable time with your d-d declarations, and then tell me you cannot
sing?"

"Your worship is perfectly in rule," said another voice, which, from its
pert conceited accent, might be that of the cleric, "and the party must
be conformable; he hath _canet_ written on his face in court hand."

"Up with it then," said the Justice, "or by St. Christopher, you shall
crack the cocoa-nut full of salt-and-water, according to the statute for
such effect made and provided."

Thus exhorted and threatened, my quondam fellow-traveller, for I could no
longer doubt that he was the recusant in question, uplifted, with a voice
similar to that of a criminal singing his last psalm on the scaffold, a
most doleful stave to the following effect:--

"Good people all, I pray give ear,
A woeful story you shall hear,
'Tis of a robber as stout as ever
Bade a true man stand and deliver.
With his foodle doo fa loodle loo.

"This knave, most worthy of a cord,
Being armed with pistol and with sword,
'Twixt Kensington and Brentford then
Did boldly stop six honest men.
With his foodle doo, etc.

"These honest men did at Brentford dine,
Having drank each man his pint of wine,
When this bold thief, with many curses,
Did say, You dogs, your lives or purses.