besides, could descry,
through the drapery of the willow, a window, of some rear building of
the inn, richly illuminated by what, from the redness of the light,
might be conjectured to be a bundle of blazing faggots.

As the horses had, immediately upon entering the ford, compelled their
masters to a halt, whilst they thrust their noses into the water and
drank with the greediness of a long and neglected thirst, it was with no
equivocal self-gratulation that Robinson directed his eye to the
presignifications of good cheer which were now before him. Butler had
spoken "never a word," and the sergeant's habits of subordination, as
well as an honest sympathy in what he guessed to be the griefs of his
superior officer, had constrained him to a respectful silence. The
sergeant, however, was full of thoughts which, more than once during the
gallop from the Fawn's Tower, he was on the point of uttering by way of
consolation to Butler, and which nothing prevented but that real
delicacy of mind that lies at the bottom of a kind nature, and inhabits
the shaggy breast of the rustic, at least full as often as it lodges in
the heart of the trim worldling. The present halt, seemed, in Horse
Shoe's reckoning, not only to furnish a pretext to speak, but, in some
degree, to render it a duty; and, in truth, an additional very
stimulating subject presented itself to our good squire, in his
instantaneous conviction that the glare from the tavern window had its
origin in some active operation which, at this late hour, might be going
on at the kitchen chimney; to understand the full pungency of which
consideration, it is necessary to inform my reader, that Robinson had,
for some time past, been yielding himself to certain doubts, whether his
friend and himself might not arrive at the inn at too late an hour to
hope for much despatch in the preparation for supper. In this state of
feeling, partly bent to cheer the spirits of Butler, and partly to
express his satisfaction at the prospect of his own comfort, he broke
forth in the following terms--

"God bless all widows that set themselves down by the road-side, is my
worst wish! and, in particular, I pray for good luck to the widow
Dimock, for an orderly sort of body, which I have no doubt she is; and
keeps good hours--to judge by the shine of the kitchen fire which is
blazing yonder in the rear--and which, to tell truth, major, I began to
be afeard would be as dead, by this time o' night, as