vant Corporal sate beneath the sign of The Spotted Dog (as it hung
motionless from the bough of a friendly elm), quaffing a cup of boon
companionship. The reader will imagine the two men very different
from each other in form and aspect; the one short, dry, fragile, and
betraying a love of ease in his unbuttoned vest, and a certain lolling,
see-sawing method of balancing his body upon his chair; the other, erect
and solemn, and as steady on his seat as if he were nailed to it. It
was a fine, tranquil balmy evening; the sun had just set, and the clouds
still retained the rosy tints which they had caught from his parting
ray. Here and there, at scattered intervals, you might see the cottages
peeping from the trees around them; or mark the smoke that rose from
their roofs--roofs green with mosses and house-leek,--in graceful and
spiral curls against the clear soft air. It was an English scene, and
the two men, the dog at their feet, (for Peter Dealtry favoured a wirey
stone-coloured cur, which he called a terrier,) and just at the door of
the little inn, two old gossips, loitering on the threshold in familiar
chat with the landlady, in cap and kerchief,--all together made a groupe
equally English, and somewhat picturesque, though homely enough, in
effect.

"Well, now," said Peter Dealtry, as he pushed the brown jug towards the
Corporal, "this is what I call pleasant; it puts me in mind--"

"Of what?" quoth the Corporal.

"Of those nice lines in the hymn, Master Bunting.

'How fair ye are, ye little hills,
Ye little fields also;
Ye murmuring streams that sweetly run;
Ye willows in a row!'

"There is something very comfortable in sacred verses, Master Bunting;
but you're a scoffer."

"Psha, man!" said the Corporal, throwing out his right leg and leaning
back, with his eyes half-shut, and his chin protruded, as he took an
unusually long inhalation from his pipe; "Psha, man!--send verses to the
right-about--fit for girls going to school of a Sunday; full-grown men
more up to snuff. I've seen the world, Master Dealtry;--the world, and
be damned to you!--augh!"

"Fie, neighbour, fie! What's the good of profaneness, evil speaking and
slandering?--

'Oaths are the debts your spendthrift soul must pay;
All scores are chalked against the reckoning day.'
Just wait a bit, neighbour; wait till I light my pipe."

"Tell you what," said the Corporal, after he had communicated from
his