rged ditch, to find my bed in the sea after
all.

All vexations seem trifling when they are once over; but, for full two
hours of this pelted pilgrimage, I felt sensations which might have
cured me of solitary sporting for the rest of my existence.

At the end of those hours, which appeared to me ten times the length, I
heard the barking of a dog, the usual announcement of peasant life; and
rejoicing in it, as one of the most welcome of all possible sounds, I
worked, felt, and waded, my way to the door of a building, at which,
without ceremony, I asked for entrance. My application was for some time
unanswered but I heard a rustling within which made me repeat my request
in various ways. After trying my eloquence in vain, I offered a guinea
for a bed. A window was now opened above, and showed a pair of heads,
which in their night-gear strongly reminded me of the grandmother wolf
in Little Red Riding hood--myself, of course, being the innocent victim.
I now doubled my offer, my whole purse amounting to no more; and was let
in.

My hosts were two, an old woman hideous with age and ferocity of
feature, but the other a young one, with a handsome but bold countenance
whose bronze had been borrowed as much from free living as from the sea
breeze. The house was furnished in the parti-coloured style, which,
showed me at once that it belonged to something above the peasant. The
women at first were rather reluctant to enter into any conversation; but
when, to make my reception welcome, I paid the two guineas down on the
table, their hearts became thawed at once, and their tongues flowed. My
wet clothes were exchanged for the fisherman's wardrobe, and a tolerable
supper was put on the table. Some luxuries which I might not have found
under roofs of more pretension, were produced one after the other; and I
thus had Hamburg hung beef, Westphalia ham, and even St Petersburg
caviare; preserved pine apple formed my desert, and a capital glass of
claret "for the gentleman," of which the ladies, however, professed
themselves incapable of discovering the merit, was followed by an
equally capital bottle of brandy, which they evidently understood much
better.

In the midst of our festivity, the dog sprang to the door, and a sound
like that of a horn or conch shell, was heard through the roar of the
gale. The women started from their seats in evident consternation, swept
away the remnants of the supper, and conveyed me into an adjoining