to "take the corner;" which
suggested to me comfortably enough how much my friends here made of a
fire,--for when had _I_ ever thought so highly of the corner, since the
days when I connected it with Jack Horner? However, as I declined, Ben,
whose touch on all convivial instruments is perfect, drew the table
apart, and instructing my Travellers to open right and left on either
side of me, and form round the fire, closed up the centre with myself and
my chair, and preserved the order we had kept at table. He had already,
in a tranquil manner, boxed the ears of the inattentive boys until they
had been by imperceptible degrees boxed out of the room; and he now
rapidly skirmished the sauce-female into the High Street, disappeared,
and softly closed the door.

This was the time for bringing the poker to bear on the billet of wood. I
tapped it three times, like an enchanted talisman, and a brilliant host
of merry-makers burst out of it, and sported off by the chimney,--rushing
up the middle in a fiery country dance, and never coming down again.
Meanwhile, by their sparkling light, which threw our lamp into the shade,
I filled the glasses, and gave my Travellers, CHRISTMAS!--CHRISTMAS-EVE,
my friends, when the shepherds, who were Poor Travellers, too, in their
way, heard the Angels sing, "On earth, peace. Good-will towards men!"

I don't know who was the first among us to think that we ought to take
hands as we sat, in deference to the toast, or whether any one of us
anticipated the others, but at any rate we all did it. We then drank to
the memory of the good Master Richard Watts. And I wish his Ghost may
never have had worse usage under that roof than it had from us.

It was the witching time for Story-telling. "Our whole life,
Travellers," said I, "is a story more or less intelligible,--generally
less; but we shall read it by a clearer light when it is ended. I, for
one, am so divided this night between fact and fiction, that I scarce
know which is which. Shall I beguile the time by telling you a story as
we sit here?"

They all answered, yes. I had little to tell them, but I was bound by my
own proposal. Therefore, after looking for awhile at the spiral column
of smoke wreathing up from my brown beauty, through which I could have
almost sworn I saw the effigy of Master Richard Watts less startled than
usual, I fired away.

CHAPTER II--THE STORY OF RICHARD DOUBLEDICK

In the year one thousand seven