ESOLUTION

On the following morning, after breakfasting with Belle, who was silent
and melancholy, I left her in the dingle, and took a stroll amongst the
neighbouring lanes. After some time I thought I would pay a visit to the
landlord of the public house, whom I had not seen since the day when he
communicated to me his intention of changing his religion. I therefore
directed my steps to the house, and on entering it found the landlord
standing in the kitchen. Just then two mean-looking fellows, who had
been drinking at one of the tables, and who appeared to be the only
customers in the house, got up, brushed past the landlord, and saying in
a surly tone, 'We shall pay you some time or other,' took their
departure. 'That's the way they serve me now,' said the landlord, with a
sigh. 'Do you know those fellows,' I demanded, 'since you let them go
away in your debt?' 'I know nothing about them,' said the landlord,
'save that they are a couple of scamps.' 'Then why did you let them go
away without paying you?' said I. 'I had not the heart to stop them,'
said the landlord; 'and, to tell you the truth, everybody serves me so
now, and I suppose they are right, for a child could flog me.'
'Nonsense,' said I, 'behave more like a man, and with respect to those
two fellows run after them, I will go with you, and if they refuse to pay
the reckoning I will help you to shake some money out of their clothes.'
'Thank you,' said the landlord; 'but as they are gone, let them go on.
What they have drank is not of much consequence.' 'What is the matter
with you?' said I, staring at the landlord, who appeared strangely
altered; his features were wild and haggard, his formerly bluff cheeks
were considerably sunken in, and his figure had lost much of its
plumpness. 'Have you changed your religion already, and has the fellow
in black commanded you to fast?' 'I have not changed my religion yet,'
said the landlord, with a kind of shudder; 'I am to change it publicly
this day fortnight, and the idea of doing so--I do not mind telling
you--preys much upon my mind; moreover, the noise of the thing has got
abroad, and everybody is laughing at me, and what's more, coming and
drinking my beer, and going away without paying for it, whilst I feel
myself like one bewitched, wishing but not daring to take my own part.
Confound the fellow in black, I wish I had never seen him! yet what can I
do without him? The brewer swears that unless I pay h