The Holly Tree

FIRST BRANCH -- MYSELF

I have kept one secret in the course of my life. I am a bashful man. Nobody would

suppose it, nobody ever does suppose it, nobody ever did suppose it, but I am naturally a

bashful man. This is the secret which I have never breathed until now.

I might greatly move the reader by some account of the innumerable places I have not

been to, the innumerable people I have not called upon or received, the innumerable

social evasions I have been guilty of, solely because I am by original constitution and

character a bashful man. But I will leave the reader unmoved, and proceed with the object

before me.

That object is to give a plain account of my travels and discoveries in the Holly-Tree Inn;

in which place of good entertainment for man and beast I was once snowed up.

It happened in the memorable year when I parted for ever from Angela Leath, whom I

was shortly to have married, on making the discovery that she preferred my bosom

friend. From our school-days I had freely admitted Edwin, in my own mind, to be far

superior to myself; and, though I was grievously wounded at heart, I felt the preference to

be natural, and tried to forgive them both. It was under these circumstances that I

resolved to go to America--on my way to the Devil.

Communicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to Edwin, but resolving to write each

of them an affecting letter conveying my blessing and forgiveness, which the steamtender

for shore should carry to the post when I myself should be bound for the New

World, far beyond recall,--I say, locking up my grief in my own breast, and consoling

myself as I could with the prospect of being generous, I quietly left all I held dear, and

started on the desolate journey I have mentioned.

The dead winter-time was in full dreariness when I left my chambers for ever, at five

o'clock in the morning. I had shaved by candle- light, of course, and was miserably cold,

and experienced that general all-pervading sensation of getting up to be hanged which I

have usually found inseparable from untimely rising under such circumstances.

How well I remember the forlorn aspect of Fleet Street when I came out of the Temple!

The street-lamps flickering in the gusty north- east wind, as if the very gas were contorted

with cold; the white- topped houses; the bleak, star-lighted sky; the market people and

other early stragglers, trotting to circulate their almost frozen blood; the hospitable light

and warmth of the few coffee-shops and public-houses that were open for such

customers; the hard, dry, frosty rime with which the air was charged (the wind had

already beaten it into every crevice), and which lashed my face like a steel whip.

It wanted nine days to the end of the month, and end of the year. The Post-office packet

for the United States was to depart from Liverpool, weather permitting, on the first of the

ensuing month, and I had the intervening time on my hands. I had taken this into

consideration, and had resolved to make a visit to a certain spot (which I need not name)

on the farther borders of Yorkshire. It was endeared to me by my having first seen

Angela at a farmhouse in that place, and my melancholy was gratified by the idea of

taking a wintry leave of it before my expatriation. I ought to explain, that, to avoid being

sought out before my resolution should have been rendered irrevocable by being carried

into full effect, I had written to Angela overnight, in my usual manner, lamenting that

urgent business, of which she should know all particulars by-and-by- -took me

unexpectedly away from her for a week or ten days.

There was no Northern Railway at that time, and in its place there were stage-coaches;

which I occasionally find myself, in common with some other people, affecting to lament

now, but which everybody dreaded as a very serious penance then. I had secured the boxseat

on the fastest of these, and my business in Fleet Street was to get into a cab with my

portmanteau, so to make the best of my way to the Peacock at Islington, where I was to

join this coach. But when one of our Temple watchmen, who carried my portmanteau

into Fleet Street for me, told me about the huge blocks of ice that had for some days past

been floating in the river, having closed up in the night, and made a walk from the

Temple Gardens over to the Surrey shore, I began to ask myself the question, whether the

box-seat would not be likely to put a sudden and a frosty end to my unhappiness. I was

heart-broken, it is true, and yet I was not quite so far gone as to wish to be frozen to

death.

When I got up to the Peacock,--where I found everybody drinking hot purl, in selfpreservation,--

I asked if there were an inside seat to spare. I then discovered that, inside

or out, I was the only passenger. This gave me a still livelier idea of the great inclemency

of the weather, since that coach always loaded particularly well. However, I took a little

purl (which I found uncommonly good), and got into the coach. When I was seated, they

built me up with straw to the waist, and, conscious of making a rather ridiculous

appearance, I began my journey.

It was still dark when we left the Peacock. For a little while, pale, uncertain ghosts of

houses and trees appeared and vanished, and then it was hard, black, frozen day. People

were lighting their fires; smoke was mounting straight up high into the rarified air; and

we were rattling for Highgate Archway over the hardest ground I have ever heard the ring

of iron shoes on. As we got into the country, everything seemed to have grown old and

gray. The roads, the trees, thatched roofs of cottages and homesteads, the ricks in farmers'

yards. Out-door work was abandoned, horse-troughs at road- side inns were frozen hard,

no stragglers lounged about, doors were close shut, little turnpike houses had blazing

fires inside, and children (even turnpike people have children, and seem to like them)

rubbed the frost from the little panes of glass with their chubby arms, that their bright

eyes might catch a glimpse of the solitary coach going by. I don't know when the snow

begin to set in; but I know that we were changing horses somewhere when I heard the

guard remark, "That the old lady up in the sky was picking her geese pretty hard to-day."

Then, indeed, I found the white down falling fast and thick.

The lonely day wore on, and I dozed it out, as a lonely traveller does. I was warm and

valiant after eating and drinking,-- particularly after dinner; cold and depressed at all

other times. I was always bewildered as to time and place, and always more or less out of

my senses. The coach and horses seemed to execute in chorus Auld Lang Syne, without a

moment's intermission. They kept the time and tune with the greatest regularity, and rose

into the swell at the beginning of the Refrain, with a precision that worried me to death.

While we changed horses, the guard and coachman went stumping up and down the road,

printing off their shoes in the snow, and poured so much liquid consolation into

themselves without being any the worse for it, that I began to confound them, as it

darkened again, with two great white casks standing on end. Our horses tumbled down in

solitary places, and we got them up,--which was the pleasantest variety I had, for it

warmed me. And it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.

All night long we went on in this manner. Thus we came round the clock, upon the Great

North Road, to the performance of Auld Lang Syne by day again. And it snowed and

snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.

I forget now where we were at noon on the second day, and where we ought to have

been; but I know that we were scores of miles behindhand, and that our case was growing

worse every hour. The drift was becoming prodigiously deep; landmarks were getting

snowed out; the road and the fields were all one; instead of having fences and hedge-rows

to guide us, we went crunching on over an unbroken surface of ghastly white that might

sink beneath us at any moment and drop us down a whole hillside. Still the coachman and

guard-- who kept together on the box, always in council, and looking well about them--

made out the track with astonishing sagacity.

When we came in sight of a town, it looked, to my fancy, like a large drawing on a slate,

with abundance of slate-pencil expended on the churches and houses where the snow lay

thickest. When we came within a town, and found the church clocks all stopped, the dial faces

choked with snow, and the inn-signs blotted out, it seemed as if the whole place

were overgrown with white moss. As to the coach, it was a mere snowball; similarly, the

men and boys who ran along beside us to the town's end, turning our clogged wheels and

encouraging our horses, were men and boys of snow; and the bleak wild solitude to

which they at last dismissed us was a snowy Sahara. One would have thought this

enough: notwithstanding which, I pledge my word that it snowed and snowed, and still it

snowed, and never left off snowing.

We performed Auld Lang Syne the whole day; seeing nothing, out of towns and villages,

but the track of stoats, hares, and foxes, and sometimes of birds. At nine o'clock at night,

on a Yorkshire moor, a cheerful burst from our horn, and a welcome sound of talking,

with a glittering and moving about of lanterns, roused me from my drowsy state. I

found that we were going to change.

They helped me out, and I said to a waiter, whose bare head became as white as King

Lear's in a single minute, "What Inn is this?"

"The Holly-Tree, sir," said he.

"Upon my word, I believe," said I, apologetically, to the guard and coachman, "that I

must stop here."

Now the landlord, and the landlady, and the ostler, and the post- boy, and all the stable

authorities, had already asked the coachman, to the wide-eyed interest of all the rest of

the establishment, if he meant to go on. The coachman had already replied, "Yes, he'd

take her through it,"--meaning by Her the coach,--"if so be as George would stand by

him." George was the guard, and he had already sworn that he would stand by him. So

the helpers were already getting the horses out.

My declaring myself beaten, after this parley, was not an announcement without

preparation. Indeed, but for the way to the announcement being smoothed by the parley, I

more than doubt whether, as an innately bashful man, I should have had the confidence to

make it. As it was, it received the approval even of the guard and coachman. Therefore,

with many confirmations of my inclining, and many remarks from one bystander to

another, that the gentleman could go for'ard by the mail to-morrow, whereas to-night he

would only be froze, and where was the good of a gentleman being froze--ah, let alone

buried alive (which latter clause was added by a humorous helper as a joke at my

expense, and was extremely well received), I saw my portmanteau got out stiff, like a

frozen body; did the handsome thing by the guard and coachman; wished them goodnight

and a prosperous journey; and, a little ashamed of myself, after all, for leaving them

to fight it out alone, followed the landlord, landlady, and waiter of the Holly-Tree upstairs.

I thought I had never seen such a large room as that into which they showed me. It had

five windows, with dark red curtains that would have absorbed the light of a general

illumination; and there were complications of drapery at the top of the curtains, that went

wandering about the wall in a most extraordinary manner. I asked for a smaller room, and

they told me there was no smaller room.

They could screen me in, however, the landlord said. They brought a great old japanned

screen, with natives (Japanese, I suppose) engaged in a variety of idiotic pursuits all over

it; and left me roasting whole before an immense fire.

My bedroom was some quarter of a mile off, up a great staircase at the end of a long

gallery; and nobody knows what a misery this is to a bashful man who would rather not

meet people on the stairs. It was the grimmest room I have ever had the nightmare in; and

all the furniture, from the four posts of the bed to the two old silver candle-sticks, was

tall, high-shouldered, and spindle-waisted. Below, in my sitting-room, if I looked round

my screen, the wind rushed at me like a mad bull; if I stuck to my arm-chair, the fire

scorched me to the colour of a new brick. The chimney-piece was very high, and there

was a bad glass--what I may call a wavy glass-- above it, which, when I stood up, just

showed me my anterior phrenological developments,--and these never look well, in any

subject, cut short off at the eyebrow. If I stood with my back to the fire, a gloomy vault of

darkness above and beyond the screen insisted on being looked at; and, in its dim

remoteness, the drapery of the ten curtains of the five windows went twisting and

creeping about, like a nest of gigantic worms.

I suppose that what I observe in myself must be observed by some other men of similar

character in themselves; therefore I am emboldened to mention, that, when I travel, I

never arrive at a place but I immediately want to go away from it. Before I had finished

my supper of broiled fowl and mulled port, I had impressed upon the waiter in detail my

arrangements for departure in the morning. Breakfast and bill at eight. Fly at nine. Two

horses, or, if needful, even four.

Tired though I was, the night appeared about a week long. In cases of nightmare, I

thought of Angela, and felt more depressed than ever by the reflection that I was on the

shortest road to Gretna Green. What had I to do with Gretna Green? I was not going that

way to the Devil, but by the American route, I remarked in my bitterness.

In the morning I found that it was snowing still, that it had snowed all night, and that I

was snowed up. Nothing could get out of that spot on the moor, or could come at it, until

the road had been cut out by labourers from the market-town. When they might cut their

way to the Holly-Tree nobody could tell me.

It was now Christmas-eve. I should have had a dismal Christmas-time of it anywhere, and

consequently that did not so much matter; still, being snowed up was like dying of frost, a

thing I had not bargained for. I felt very lonely. Yet I could no more have proposed to the

landlord and landlady to admit me to their society (though I should have liked it--very

much) than I could have asked them to present me with a piece of plate. Here my great

secret, the real bashfulness of my character, is to be observed. Like most bashful men, I

judge of other people as if they were bashful too. Besides being far too shamefaced to

make the proposal myself, I really had a delicate misgiving that it would be in the last

degree disconcerting to them.

Trying to settle down, therefore, in my solitude, I first of all asked what books there were

in the house. The waiter brought me a Book of Roads, two or three old Newspapers, a

little Song-Book, terminating in a collection of Toasts and Sentiments, a little Jest- Book,

an odd volume of Peregrine Pickle, and the Sentimental Journey. I knew every word of

the two last already, but I read them through again, then tried to hum all the songs (Auld

Lang Syne was among them); went entirely through the jokes,--in which I found a fund

of melancholy adapted to my state of mind; proposed all the toasts, enunciated all the

sentiments, and mastered the papers. The latter had nothing in them but stock

advertisements, a meeting about a county rate, and a highway robbery. As I am a greedy

reader, I could not make this supply hold out until night; it was exhausted by tea-time.

Being then entirely cast upon my own resources, I got through an hour in considering

what to do next. Ultimately, it came into my head (from which I was anxious by any

means to exclude Angela and Edwin), that I would endeavour to recall my experience of

Inns, and would try how long it lasted me. I stirred the fire, moved my chair a little to one

side of the screen,--not daring to go far, for I knew the wind was waiting to make a rush

at me, I could hear it growling,--and began.

My first impressions of an Inn dated from the Nursery; consequently I went back to the

Nursery for a starting-point, and found myself at the knee of a sallow woman with a fishy

eye, an aquiline nose, and a green gown, whose specially was a dismal narrative of a

landlord by the roadside, whose visitors unaccountably disappeared for many years, until

it was discovered that the pursuit of his life had been to convert them into pies. For the

better devotion of himself to this branch of industry, he had constructed a secret door

behind the head of the bed; and when the visitor (oppressed with pie) had fallen asleep,

this wicked landlord would look softly in with a lamp in one hand and a knife in the

other, would cut his throat, and would make him into pies; for which purpose he had

coppers, underneath a trap-door, always boiling; and rolled out his pastry in the dead of

the night. Yet even he was not insensible to the stings of conscience, for he never went to

sleep without being heard to mutter, "Too much pepper!" which was eventually the cause

of his being brought to justice. I had no sooner disposed of this criminal than there started

up another of the same period, whose profession was originally house-breaking; in the

pursuit of which art he had had his right ear chopped off one night, as he was

burglariously getting in at a window, by a brave and lovely servant-maid (whom the

aquiline-nosed woman, though not at all answering the description, always mysteriously

implied to be herself). After several years, this brave and lovely servant-maid was

married to the landlord of a country Inn; which landlord had this remarkable

characteristic, that he always wore a silk nightcap, and never would on any consideration

take it off. At last, one night, when he was fast asleep, the brave and lovely woman lifted

up his silk nightcap on the right side, and found that he had no ear there; upon which she

sagaciously perceived that he was the clipped housebreaker, who had married her with

the intention of putting her to death. She immediately heated the poker and terminated his

career, for which she was taken to King George upon his throne, and received the

compliments of royalty on her great discretion and valour. This same narrator, who had a

Ghoulish pleasure, I have long been persuaded, in terrifying me to the utmost confines of

my reason, had another authentic anecdote within her own experience, founded, I now

believe, upon Raymond and Agnes, or the Bleeding Nun. She said it happened to her

brother-in-law, who was immensely rich,--which my father was not; and immensely tall,-

-which my father was not. It was always a point with this Ghoul to present my clearest

relations and friends to my youthful mind under circumstances of disparaging contrast.

The brother-in-law was riding once through a forest on a magnificent horse (we had no

magnificent horse at our house), attended by a favourite and valuable Newfoundland dog

(we had no dog), when he found himself benighted, and came to an Inn. A dark woman

opened the door, and he asked her if he could have a bed there. She answered yes, and

put his horse in the stable, and took him into a room where there were two dark men.

While he was at supper, a parrot in the room began to talk, saying, "Blood, blood! Wipe

up the blood!" Upon which one of the dark men wrung the parrot's neck, and said he was

fond of roasted parrots, and he meant to have this one for breakfast in the morning. After

eating and drinking heartily, the immensely rich, tall brother-in-law went up to bed; but

he was rather vexed, because they had shut his dog in the stable, saying that they never

allowed dogs in the house. He sat very quiet for more than an hour, thinking and

thinking, when, just as his candle was burning out, he heard a scratch at the door. He

opened the door, and there was the Newfoundland dog! The dog came softly in, smelt

about him, went straight to some straw in the corner which the dark men had said covered

apples, tore the straw away, and disclosed two sheets steeped in blood. Just at that

moment the candle went out, and the brother-in-law, looking through a chink in the door,

saw the two dark men stealing up-stairs; one armed with a dagger that long (about five

feet); the other carrying a chopper, a sack, and a spade. Having no remembrance of the

close of this adventure, I suppose my faculties to have been always so frozen with terror

at this stage of it, that the power of listening stagnated within me for some quarter of an

Hour.

These barbarous stories carried me, sitting there on the Holly-Tree hearth, to the

Roadside Inn, renowned in my time in a sixpenny book with a folding plate, representing

in a central compartment of oval form the portrait of Jonathan Bradford, and in four

corner compartments four incidents of the tragedy with which the name is associated,--

coloured with a hand at once so free and economical, that the bloom of Jonathan's

complexion passed without any pause into the breeches of the ostler, and, smearing itself

off into the next division, became rum in a bottle. Then I remembered how the landlord

was found at the murdered traveller's bedside, with his own knife at his feet, and blood

upon his hand; how he was hanged for the murder, notwithstanding his protestation that

he had indeed come there to kill the traveller for his saddle-bags, but had been stricken

motionless on finding him already slain; and how the ostler, years afterwards, owned the

deed. By this time I had made myself quite uncomfortable. I stirred the fire, and stood

with my back to it as long as I could bear the heat, looking up at the darkness beyond the

screen, and at the wormy curtains creeping in and creeping out, like the worms in the

ballad of Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene.

There was an Inn in the cathedral town where I went to school, which had pleasanter

recollections about it than any of these. I took it next. It was the Inn where friends used to

put up, and where we used to go to see parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be

tipped. It had an ecclesiastical sign,--the Mitre,--and a bar that seemed to be the next best

thing to a bishopric, it was so snug. I loved the landlord's youngest daughter to

distraction,--but let that pass. It was in this Inn that I was cried over by my rosy little

sister, because I had acquired a black eye in a fight. And though she had been, that Holly-

Tree night, for many a long year where all tears are dried, the Mitre softened me yet.

"To be continued to-morrow," said I, when I took my candle to go to bed. But my bed

took it upon itself to continue the train of thought that night. It carried me away, like the

enchanted carpet, to a distant place (though still in England), and there, alighting from a

stage-coach at another Inn in the snow, as I had actually done some years before, I

repeated in my sleep a curious experience I had really had there. More than a year before

I made the journey in the course of which I put up at that Inn, I had lost a very near and

dear friend by death. Every night since, at home or away from home, I had dreamed of

that friend; sometimes as still living; sometimes as returning from the world of shadows

to comfort me; always as being beautiful, placid, and happy, never in association with

any approach to fear or distress. It was at a lonely Inn in a wide moorland place, that I

halted to pass the night. When I had looked from my bedroom window over the waste of

snow on which the moon was shining, I sat down by my fire to write a letter. I had

always, until that hour, kept it within my own breast that I dreamed every night of the

dear lost one. But in the letter that I wrote I recorded the circumstance, and added that I

felt much interested in proving whether the subject of my dream would still be faithful to

me, travel-tired, and in that remote place. No. I lost the beloved figure of my vision in

parting with the secret. My sleep has never looked upon it since, in sixteen years, but

once. I was in Italy, and awoke (or seemed to awake), the well-remembered voice

distinctly in my ears, conversing with it. I entreated it, as it rose above my bed and soared

up to the vaulted roof of the old room, to answer me a question I had asked touching the

Future Life. My hands were still outstretched towards it as it vanished, when I heard a

bell ringing by the garden wall, and a voice in the deep stillness of the night calling on all

good Christians to pray for the souls of the dead; it being All Souls' Eve.

To return to the Holly-Tree. When I awoke next day, it was freezing hard, and the

lowering sky threatened more snow. My breakfast cleared away, I drew my chair into its

former place, and, with the fire getting so much the better of the landscape that I sat in

twilight, resumed my Inn remembrances.

That was a good Inn down in Wiltshire where I put up once, in the days of the hard

Wiltshire ale, and before all beer was bitterness. It was on the skirts of Salisbury Plain,

and the midnight wind that rattled my lattice window came moaning at me from

Stonehenge. There was a hanger-on at that establishment (a supernaturally preserved

Druid I believe him to have been, and to be still), with long white hair, and a flinty blue

eye always looking afar off; who claimed to have been a shepherd, and who seemed to be

ever watching for the reappearance, on the verge of the horizon, of some ghostly flock of

sheep that had been mutton for many ages. He was a man with a weird belief in him that

no one could count the stones of Stonehenge twice, and make the same number of them;

likewise, that any one who counted them three times nine times, and then stood in the

centre and said, "I dare!" would behold a tremendous apparition, and be stricken dead. He

pretended to have seen a bustard (I suspect him to have been familiar with the dodo), in

manner following: He was out upon the plain at the close of a late autumn day, when he

dimly discerned, going on before him at a curious fitfully bounding pace, what he at first

supposed to be a gig-umbrella that had been blown from some conveyance, but what he

presently believed to be a lean dwarf man upon a little pony. Having followed this object

for some distance without gaining on it, and having called to it many times without

receiving any answer, he pursued it for miles and miles, when, at length coming up with

it, he discovered it to be the last bustard in Great Britain, degenerated into a wingless

state, and running along the ground. Resolved to capture him or perish in the attempt, he

closed with the bustard; but the bustard, who had formed a counter-resolution that he

should do neither, threw him, stunned him, and was last seen making off due west. This

weird main, at that stage of metempsychosis, may have been a sleep-walker or an

enthusiast or a robber; but I awoke one night to find him in the dark at my bedside,

repeating the Athanasian Creed in a terrific voice. I paid my bill next day, and retired

from the county with all possible precipitation.

That was not a commonplace story which worked itself out at a little Inn in Switzerland,

while I was staying there. It was a very homely place, in a village of one narrow zigzag

street, among mountains, and you went in at the main door through the cow-house, and

among the mules and the dogs and the fowls, before ascending a great bare staircase to

the rooms; which were all of unpainted wood, without plastering or papering,--like rough

packing-cases. Outside there was nothing but the straggling street, a little toy church with

a copper-coloured steeple, a pine forest, a torrent, mists, and mountain-sides. A young

man belonging to this Inn had disappeared eight weeks before (it was winter-time), and

was supposed to have had some undiscovered love affair, and to have gone for a soldier.

He had got up in the night, and dropped into the village street from the loft in which he

slept with another man; and he had done it so quietly, that his companion and fellow labourer

had heard no movement when he was awakened in the morning, and they said,

"Louis, where is Henri?" They looked for him high and low, in vain, and gave him up.

Now, outside this Inn, there stood, as there stood outside every dwelling in the village, a

stack of firewood; but the stack belonging to the Inn was higher than any of the rest,

because the Inn was the richest house, and burnt the most fuel. It began to be noticed,

while they were looking high and low, that a Bantam cock, part of the live stock of the

Inn, put himself wonderfully out of his way to get to the top of this wood-stack; and that

he would stay there for hours and hours, crowing, until he appeared in danger of splitting

himself. Five weeks went on,--six weeks,--and still this terrible Bantam, neglecting his

domestic affairs, was always on the top of the wood-stack, crowing the very eyes out of

his head. By this time it was perceived that Louis had become inspired with a violent

animosity towards the terrible Bantam, and one morning he was seen by a woman, who

sat nursing her goitre at a little window in a gleam of sun, to catch up a rough billet of

wood, with a great oath, hurl it at the terrible Bantam crowing on the wood-stack, and

bring him down dead. Hereupon the woman, with a sudden light in her mind, stole round

to the back of the wood-stack, and, being a good climber, as all those women are,

climbed up, and soon was seen upon the summit, screaming, looking down the hollow

within, and crying, "Seize Louis, the murderer! Ring the church bell! Here is the body!" I

saw the murderer that day, and I saw him as I sat by my fire at the Holly-Tree Inn, and I

see him now, lying shackled with cords on the stable litter, among the mild eyes and the

smoking breath of the cows, waiting to be taken away by the police, and stared at by the

fearful village. A heavy animal,--the dullest animal in the stables,--with a stupid head,

and a lumpish face devoid of any trace of insensibility, who had been, within the

knowledge of the murdered youth, an embezzler of certain small moneys belonging to his

master, and who had taken this hopeful mode of putting a possible accuser out of his way.

All of which he confessed next day, like a sulky wretch who couldn't be troubled any

more, now that they had got hold of him, and meant to make an end of him. I saw him

once again, on the day of my departure from the Inn. In that Canton the headsman still

does his office with a sword; and I came upon this murderer sitting bound, to a chair,

with his eyes bandaged, on a scaffold in a little market-place. In that instant, a great

sword (loaded with quicksilver in the thick part of the blade) swept round him like a gust

of wind or fire, and there was no such creature in the world. My wonder was, not that he

was so suddenly dispatched, but that any head was left unreaped, within a radius of fifty

yards of that tremendous sickle.

That was a good Inn, too, with the kind, cheerful landlady and the honest landlord, where

I lived in the shadow of Mont Blanc, and where one of the apartments has a zoological

papering on the walls, not so accurately joined but that the elephant occasionally rejoices

in a tiger's hind legs and tail, while the lion puts on a trunk and tusks, and the bear,

moulting as it were, appears as to portions of himself like a leopard. I made several

American friends at that Inn, who all called Mont Blanc Mount Blank,--except one good humoured

gentleman, of a very sociable nature, who became on such intimate terms with

it that he spoke of it familiarly as "Blank;" observing, at breakfast, "Blank looks pretty

tall this morning;" or considerably doubting in the courtyard in the evening, whether

there warn't some go-ahead naters in our country, sir, that would make out the top of

Blank in a couple of hours from first start--now!

Once I passed a fortnight at an Inn in the North of England, where I was haunted by the

ghost of a tremendous pie. It was a Yorkshire pie, like a fort,--an abandoned fort with

nothing in it; but the waiter had a fixed idea that it was a point of ceremony at every meal

to put the pie on the table. After some days I tried to hint, in several delicate ways, that I

considered the pie done with; as, for example, by emptying fag-ends of glasses of wine

into it; putting cheese-plates and spoons into it, as into a basket; putting wine-bottles into

it, as into a cooler; but always in vain, the pie being invariably cleaned out again and

brought up as before. At last, beginning to be doubtful whether I was not the victim of a

spectral illusion, and whether my health and spirits might not sink under the horrors of an

imaginary pie, I cut a triangle out of it, fully as large as the musical instrument of that

name in a powerful orchestra. Human provision could not have foreseen the result--but

the waiter mended the pie. With some effectual species of cement, he adroitly fitted the

triangle in again, and I paid my reckoning and fled.

The Holly-Tree was getting rather dismal. I made an overland expedition beyond the

screen, and penetrated as far as the fourth window. Here I was driven back by stress of

weather. Arrived at my winter-quarters once more, I made up the fire, and took another

Inn.

It was in the remotest part of Cornwall. A great annual Miners' Feast was being holden at

the Inn, when I and my travelling companions presented ourselves at night among the

wild crowd that were dancing before it by torchlight. We had had a break-down in the

dark, on a stony morass some miles away; and I had the honour of leading one of the

unharnessed post-horses. If any lady or gentleman, on perusal of the present lines, will

take any very tall post-horse with his traces hanging about his legs, and will conduct him

by the bearing-rein into the heart of a country dance of a hundred and fifty couples, that

lady or gentleman will then, and only then, form an adequate idea of the extent to which

that post- horse will tread on his conductor's toes. Over and above which, the post-horse,

finding three hundred people whirling about him, will probably rear, and also lash out

with his hind legs, in a manner incompatible with dignity or self-respect on his

conductor's part. With such little drawbacks on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared

at this Cornish Inn, to the unutterable wonder of the Cornish Miners. It was full, and

twenty times full, and nobody could be received but the post-horse,--though to get rid of

that noble animal was something. While my fellow-travellers and I were discussing how

to pass the night and so much of the next day as must intervene before the jovial

blacksmith and the jovial wheelwright would be in a condition to go out on the morass

and mend the coach, an honest man stepped forth from the crowd and proposed his unlet

floor of two rooms, with supper of eggs and bacon, ale and punch. We joyfully

accompanied him home to the strangest of clean houses, where we were well entertained

to the satisfaction of all parties. But the novel feature of the entertainment was, that our

host was a chair-maker, and that the chairs assigned to us were mere frames, altogether

without bottoms of any sort; so that we passed the evening on perches. Nor was this the

absurdist consequence; for when we unbent at supper, and any one of us gave way to

laughter, he forgot the peculiarity of his position, and instantly disappeared. I myself,

doubled up into an attitude from which self-extrication was impossible, was taken out of

my frame, like a clown in a comic pantomime who has tumbled into a tub, five times by

the taper's light during the eggs and bacon.

The Holly-Tree was fast reviving within me a sense of loneliness. I began to feel

conscious that my subject would never carry on until I was dug out. I might be a week

Here,--weeks!

There was a story with a singular idea in it, connected with an Inn I once passed a night at

in a picturesque old town on the Welsh border. In a large double-bedded room of this Inn

there had been a suicide committed by poison, in one bed, while a tired traveller slept

unconscious in the other. After that time, the suicide bed was never used, but the other

constantly was; the disused bedstead remaining in the room empty, though as to all other

respects in its old state. The story ran, that whosoever slept in this room, though never so

entire a stranger, from never so far off, was invariably observed to come down in the

morning with an impression that he smelt Laudanum, and that his mind always turned

upon the subject of suicide; to which, whatever kind of man he might be, he was certain

to make some reference if he conversed with any one. This went on for years, until it at

length induced the landlord to take the disused bedstead down, and bodily burn it,--bed,

hangings, and all. The strange influence (this was the story) now changed to a fainter one,

but never changed afterwards. The occupant of that room, with occasional but very rare

exceptions, would come down in the morning, trying to recall a forgotten dream he had

had in the night. The landlord, on his mentioning his perplexity, would suggest various

commonplace subjects, not one of which, as he very well knew, was the true subject. But

the moment the landlord suggested "Poison," the traveller started, and cried, "Yes!" He

never failed to accept that suggestion, and he never recalled any more of the dream.

This reminiscence brought the Welsh Inns in general before me; with the women in their

round hats, and the harpers with their white beards (venerable, but humbugs, I am afraid),

playing outside the door while I took my dinner. The transition was natural to the

Highland Inns, with the oatmeal bannocks, the honey, the venison steaks, the trout from

the loch, the whisky, and perhaps (having the materials so temptingly at hand) the Athol

brose. Once was I coming south from the Scottish Highlands in hot haste, hoping to

change quickly at the station at the bottom of a certain wild historical glen, when these

eyes did with mortification see the landlord come out with a telescope and sweep the

whole prospect for the horses; which horses were away picking up their own living, and

did not heave in sight under four hours. Having thought of the loch-trout, I was taken by

quick association to the Anglers' Inns of England (I have assisted at innumerable feats of

angling by lying in the bottom of the boat, whole summer days, doing nothing with the

greatest perseverance; which I have generally found to be as effectual towards the taking

of fish as the finest tackle and the utmost science), and to the pleasant white, clean,

flower-pot-decorated bedrooms of those inns, overlooking the river, and the ferry, and the

green ait, and the church-spire, and the country bridge; and to the peerless Emma with the

bright eyes and the pretty smile, who waited, bless her! with a natural grace that would

have converted Blue-Beard. Casting my eyes upon my Holly-Tree fire, I next discerned

among the glowing coals the pictures of a score or more of those wonderful English

posting-inns which we are all so sorry to have lost, which were so large and so

comfortable, and which were such monuments of British submission to rapacity and

extortion. He who would see these houses pining away, let him walk from Basingstoke,

or even Windsor, to London, by way of Hounslow, and moralise on their perishing

remains; the stables crumbling to dust; unsettled labourers and wanderers bivouacking in

the outhouses; grass growing in the yards; the rooms, where erst so many hundred beds of

down were made up, let off to Irish lodgers at eighteenpence a week; a little ill-looking

beer-shop shrinking in the tap of former days, burning coach-house gates for firewood,

having one of its two windows bunged up, as if it had received punishment in a fight with

the Railroad; a low, bandy-legged, brick-making bulldog standing in the doorway. What

could I next see in my fire so naturally as the new railway-house of these times near the

dismal country station; with nothing particular on draught but cold air and damp, nothing

worth mentioning in the larder but new mortar, and no business doing beyond a conceited

affectation of luggage in the hall? Then I came to the Inns of Paris, with the pretty

apartment of four pieces up one hundred and seventy-five waxed stairs, the privilege of

ringing the bell all day long without influencing anybody's mind or body but your own,

and the not-too-much-for- dinner, considering the price. Next to the provincial Inns of

France, with the great church-tower rising above the courtyard, the horse-bells jingling

merrily up and down the street beyond, and the clocks of all descriptions in all the rooms,

which are never right, unless taken at the precise minute when, by getting exactly twelve

hours too fast or too slow, they unintentionally become so. Away I went, next, to the

lesser roadside Inns of Italy; where all the dirty clothes in the house (not in wear) are

always lying in your anteroom; where the mosquitoes make a raisin pudding of your face

in summer, and the cold bites it blue in winter; where you get what you can, and forget

what you can't: where I should again like to be boiling my tea in a pocket-handkerchief

dumpling, for want of a teapot. So to the old palace Inns and old monastery Inns, in

towns and cities of the same bright country; with their massive quadrangular staircases,

whence you may look from among clustering pillars high into the blue vault of heaven;

with their stately banqueting-rooms, and vast refectories; with their labyrinths of ghostly

bedchambers, and their glimpses into gorgeous streets that have no appearance of reality

or possibility. So to the close little Inns of the Malaria districts, with their pale attendants,

and their peculiar smell of never letting in the air. So to the immense fantastic Inns of

Venice, with the cry of the gondolier below, as he skims the corner; the grip of the watery

odours on one particular little bit of the bridge of your nose (which is never released

while you stay there); and the great bell of St. Mark's Cathedral tolling midnight. Next I

put up for a minute at the restless Inns upon the Rhine, where your going to bed, no

matter at what hour, appears to be the tocsin for everybody else's getting up; and where,

in the table-d'hote room at the end of the long table (with several Towers of Babel on it at

the other end, all made of white plates), one knot of stoutish men, entirely dressed in

jewels and dirt, and having nothing else upon them, will remain all night, clinking

glasses, and singing about the river that flows, and the grape that grows, and Rhine wine

that beguiles, and Rhine woman that smiles and hi drink drink my friend and ho drink

drink my brother, and all the rest of it. I departed thence, as a matter of course, to other

German Inns, where all the eatables are saddened down to the same flavour, and where

the mind is disturbed by the apparition of hot puddings, and boiled cherries, sweet and

slab, at awfully unexpected periods of the repast. After a draught of sparkling beer from a

foaming glass jug, and a glance of recognition through the windows of the student beerhouses

at Heidelberg and elsewhere, I put out to sea for the Inns of America, with their

four hundred beds apiece, and their eight or nine hundred ladies and gentlemen at dinner

every day. Again I stood in the bar-rooms thereof, taking my evening cobbler, julep,

sling, or cocktail. Again I listened to my friend the General,--whom I had known for five

minutes, in the course of which period he had made me intimate for life with two Majors,

who again had made me intimate for life with three Colonels, who again had made me

brother to twenty-two civilians,--again, I say, I listened to my friend the General,

leisurely expounding the resources of the establishment, as to gentlemen's morning-room,

sir; ladies' morning-room, sir; gentlemen's evening-room, sir; ladies' evening-room, sir;

ladies' and gentlemen's evening reuniting-room, sir; music-room, sir; reading-room, sir;

over four hundred sleeping- rooms, sir; and the entire planned and finited within twelve

calendar months from the first clearing off of the old encumbrances on the plot, at a cost

of five hundred thousand dollars, sir. Again I found, as to my individual way of thinking,

that the greater, the more gorgeous, and the more dollarous the establishment was, the

less desirable it was. Nevertheless, again I drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, in

all good-will, to my friend the General, and my friends the Majors, Colonels, and

civilians all; full well knowing that, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have

descried in theirs, they belong to a kind, generous, large-hearted, and great people.

I had been going on lately at a quick pace to keep my solitude out of my mind; but here I

broke down for good, and gave up the subject. What was I to do? What was to become of

me? Into what extremity was I submissively to sink? Supposing that, like Baron Trenck, I

looked out for a mouse or spider, and found one, and beguiled my imprisonment by

training it? Even that might be dangerous with a view to the future. I might be so far gone

when the road did come to be cut through the snow, that, on my way forth, I might burst

into tears, and beseech, like the prisoner who was released in his old age from the

Bastille, to be taken back again to the five windows, the ten curtains, and the sinuous

Drapery.

A desperate idea came into my head. Under any other circumstances I should have

rejected it; but, in the strait at which I was, I held it fast. Could I so far overcome the

inherent bashfulness which withheld me from the landlord's table and the company I

might find there, as to call up the Boots, and ask him to take a chair,--and something in a

liquid form,--and talk to me? I could, I would, I did.

SECOND BRANCH -- THE BOOTS

Where had he been in his time? he repeated, when I asked him the question. Lord, he had

been everywhere! And what had he been? Bless you, he had been everything you could

mention almost!

Seen a good deal? Why, of course he had. I should say so, he could assure me, if I only

knew about a twentieth part of what had come in his way. Why, it would be easier for

him, he expected, to tell what he hadn't seen than what he had. Ah! A deal, it would.

What was the curiousest thing he had seen? Well! He didn't know. He couldn't momently

name what was the curiousest thing he had seen- -unless it was a Unicorn, and he see him

once at a Fair. But supposing a young gentleman not eight year old was to run away with

a fine young woman of seven, might I think that a queer start? Certainly. Then that was a

start as he himself had had his blessed eyes on, and he had cleaned the shoes they run

away in--and they was so little that he couldn't get his hand into 'em.

Master Harry Walmers' father, you see, he lived at the Elmses, down away by Shooter's

Hill there, six or seven miles from Lunnon. He was a gentleman of spirit, and good looking,

and held his head up when he walked, and had what you may call Fire about

him. He wrote poetry, and he rode, and he ran, and he cricketed, and he danced, and he

acted, and he done it all equally beautiful. He was uncommon proud of Master Harry as

was his only child; but he didn't spoil him neither. He was a gentleman that had a will of

his own and a eye of his own, and that would be minded. Consequently, though he made

quite a companion of the fine bright boy, and was delighted to see him so fond of reading

his fairy books, and was never tired of hearing him say my name is Norval, or hearing

him sing his songs about Young May Moons is beaming love, and When he as adores

thee has left but the name, and that; still he kept the command over the child, and the

child was a child, and it's to be wished more of 'em was!

How did Boots happen to know all this? Why, through being under- gardener. Of course

he couldn't be under-gardener, and be always about, in the summer-time, near the

windows on the lawn, a mowing, and sweeping, and weeding, and pruning, and this and

that, without getting acquainted with the ways of the family. Even supposing Master

Harry hadn't come to him one morning early, and said, "Cobbs, how should you spell

Norah, if you was asked?" and then began cutting it in print all over the fence.

He couldn't say he had taken particular notice of children before that; but really it was

pretty to see them two mites a going about the place together, deep in love. And the

courage of the boy! Bless your soul, he'd have throwed off his little hat, and tucked up his

little sleeves, and gone in at a Lion, he would, if they had happened to meet one, and she

had been frightened of him. One day he stops, along with her, where Boots was hoeing

weeds in the gravel, and says, speaking up, "Cobbs," he says, "I like you." "Do you, sir?

I'm proud to hear it." "Yes, I do, Cobbs. Why do I like you, do you think, Cobbs?" "Don't

know, Master Harry, I am sure." "Because Norah likes you, Cobbs." "Indeed, sir? That's

very gratifying." "Gratifying, Cobbs? It's better than millions of the brightest diamonds to

be liked by Norah." "Certainly, sir." "You're going away, ain't you, Cobbs?" "Yes, sir."

"Would you like another situation, Cobbs?" "Well, sir, I shouldn't object, if it was a good

Inn." "Then, Cobbs," says he, "you shall be our Head Gardener when we are married."

And he tucks her, in her little sky- blue mantle, under his arm, and walks away.

Boots could assure me that it was better than a picture, and equal to a play, to see them

babies, with their long, bright, curling hair, their sparkling eyes, and their beautiful light

tread, a rambling about the garden, deep in love. Boots was of opinion that the birds

believed they was birds, and kept up with 'em, singing to please 'em. Sometimes they

would creep under the Tulip-tree, and would sit there with their arms round one another's

necks, and their soft cheeks touching, a reading about the Prince and the Dragon, and the

good and bad enchanters, and the king's fair daughter. Sometimes he would hear them

planning about having a house in a forest, keeping bees and a cow, and living entirely on

milk and honey. Once he came upon them by the pond, and heard Master Harry say,

"Adorable Norah, kiss me, and say you love me to distraction, or I'll jump in headforemost."

And Boots made no question he would have done it if she hadn't complied. On

the whole, Boots said it had a tendency to make him feel as if he was in love himself--

only he didn't exactly know who with.

"Cobbs," said Master Harry, one evening, when Cobbs was watering the flowers, "I am

going on a visit, this present Midsummer, to my grandmama's at York."

"Are you indeed, sir? I hope you'll have a pleasant time. I am going into Yorkshire,

myself, when I leave here."

"Are you going to your grandmama's, Cobbs?"

"No, sir. I haven't got such a thing."

"Not as a grandmamma, Cobbs?"

"No, sir."

The boy looked on at the watering of the flowers for a little while, and then said, "I shall

be very glad indeed to go, Cobbs,--Norah's going."

"You'll be all right then, sir," says Cobbs, "with your beautiful sweetheart by your side."

"Cobbs," returned the boy, flushing, "I never let anybody joke about it, when I can

prevent them."

"It wasn't a joke, sir," says Cobbs, with humility,--"wasn't so meant."

"I am glad of that, Cobbs, because I like you, you know, and you're going to live with us.-

-Cobbs!"

"Sir."

"What do you think my grandma gives me when I go down there?"

"I couldn't so much as make a guess, sir."

"A Bank of England five-pound note, Cobbs."

"Whew!" says Cobbs, "that's a spanking sum of money, Master Harry."

"A person could do a good deal with such a sum of money as that,-- couldn't a person,

Cobbs?"

"I believe you, sir!"

"Cobbs," said the boy, "I'll tell you a secret. At Norah's house, they have been joking her

about me, and pretending to laugh at our being engaged,--pretending to make game of it,

Cobbs!"

"Such, sir," says Cobbs, "is the depravity of human nature."

The boy, looking exactly like his father, stood for a few minutes with his glowing face

towards the sunset, and then departed with, "Good-night, Cobbs. I'm going in."

If I was to ask Boots how it happened that he was a-going to leave that place just at that

present time, well, he couldn't rightly answer me. He did suppose he might have stayed

there till now if he had been anyways inclined. But, you see, he was younger then, and he

wanted change. That's what he wanted,--change. Mr. Walmers, he said to him when he

gave him notice of his intentions to leave, "Cobbs," he says, "have you anything to

complain of? I make the inquiry because if I find that any of my people really has

anything to complain of, I wish to make it right if I can." "No, sir." says Cobbs; "thanking

you, sir, I find myself as well situated here as I could hope to be anywheres. The truth is,

sir, that I'm a-going to seek my fortunE, indeed, Cobbs!" he says; "I hope you may

find it." And Boots could assure me--which he did, touching his hair with his bootjack, as

a salute in the way of his present calling-- that he hadn't found it yet.

Well, sir! Boots left the Elmses when his time was up, and Master Harry, he went down

to the old lady's at York, which old lady would have given that child the teeth out of her

head (if she had had any), she was so wrapped up in him. What does that Infant do,--for

Infant you may call him and be within the mark,--but cut away from that old lady's with

his Norah, on a expedition to go to Gretna Green and be married!

Sir, Boots was at this identical Holly-Tree Inn (having left it several times since to better

himself, but always come back through one thing or another), when, one summer

afternoon, the coach drives up, and out of the coach gets them two children. The Guard

says to our Governor, "I don't quite make out these little passengers, but the young

gentleman's words was, that they was to be brought here." The young gentleman gets out;

hands his lady out; gives the Guard something for himself; says to our Governor, "We're

to stop here to- night, please. Sitting-room and two bedrooms will be required. Chops and

cherry-pudding for two!" and tucks her, in her sky-blue mantle, under his arm, and walks

into the house much bolder than Brass.

Boots leaves me to judge what the amazement of that establishment was, when these two

tiny creatures all alone by themselves was marched into the Angel,--much more so, when

he, who had seen them without their seeing him, give the Governor his views of the

expedition they was upon. "Cobbs," says the Governor, "if this is so, I must set off myself

to York, and quiet their friends' minds. In which case you must keep your eye upon 'em,

and humour 'em, till I come back. But before I take these measures, Cobbs, I should wish

you to find from themselves whether your opinion is correct." "Sir, to you," says Cobbs,

"that shall be done directly."

So Boots goes up-stairs to the Angel, and there he finds Master Harry on a e-normous

sofa,--immense at any time, but looking like the Great Bed of Ware, compared with him,-

-a drying the eyes of Miss Norah with his pocket-hankecher. Their little legs was entirely

off the ground, of course, and it really is not possible for Boots to express to me how

small them children looked.

"It's Cobbs! It's Cobbs!" cries Master Harry, and comes running to him, and catching

hold of his hand. Miss Norah comes running to him on t'other side and catching hold of

his t'other hand, and they both jump for joy.

"I see you a getting out, sir," says Cobbs. "I thought it was you. I thought I couldn't be

mistaken in your height and figure. What's the object of your journey, sir?--

Matrimonial?"

"We are going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna Green," returned the boy. "We have run

away on purpose. Norah has been in rather low spirits, Cobbs; but she'll be happy, now

we have found you to be our friend."

"Thank you, sir, and thank you, miss," says Cobbs, "for your good opinion. Did you bring

any luggage with you, sir?"

If I will believe Boots when he gives me his word and honour upon it, the lady had got a

parasol, a smelling-bottle, a round and a half of cold buttered toast, eight peppermint

drops, and a hair- brush,--seemingly a doll's. The gentleman had got about half a dozen

yards of string, a knife, three or four sheets of writing- paper folded up surprising small, a

orange, and a Chaney mug with his name upon it.

"What may be the exact nature of your plans, sir?" says Cobbs.

"To go on," replied the boy,--which the courage of that boy was something wonderful!--

"in the morning, and be married to-morrow."

"Just so, sir," says Cobbs. "Would it meet your views, sir, if I was to accompany you?"

When Cobbs said this, they both jumped for joy again, and cried out, "Oh, yes, yes,

Cobbs! Yes!"

"Well, sir," says Cobbs. "If you will excuse my having the freedom to give an opinion,

what I should recommend would be this. I'm acquainted with a pony, sir, which, put in a

phaeton that I could borrow, would take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, (myself

driving, if you approved,) to the end of your journey in a very short space of time. I am

not altogether sure, sir, that this pony will be at liberty to-morrow, but even if you had to

wait over to- morrow for him, it might be worth your while. As to the small account here,

sir, in case you was to find yourself running at all short, that don't signify; because I'm a

part proprietor of this inn, and it could stand over."

Boots assures me that when they clapped their hands, and jumped for joy again, and

called him "Good Cobbs!" and "Dear Cobbs!" and bent across him to kiss one another in

the delight of their confiding hearts, he felt himself the meanest rascal for deceiving 'em

that ever was born.

"Is there anything you want just at present, sir?" says Cobbs, mortally ashamed of

Himself.

"We should like some cakes after dinner," answered Master Harry, folding his arms,

putting out one leg, and looking straight at him, "and two apples,--and jam. With dinner

we should like to have toast-and-water. But Norah has always been accustomed to half a

glass of currant wine at dessert. And so have I."

"It shall be ordered at the bar, sir," says Cobbs; and away he went.

Boots has the feeling as fresh upon him at this minute of speaking as he had then, that he

would far rather have had it out in half-a- dozen rounds with the Governor than have

combined with him; and that he wished with all his heart there was any impossible place

where those two babies could make an impossible marriage, and live impossibly happy

ever afterwards. However, as it couldn't be, he went into the Governor's plans, and the

Governor set off for York in half an hour.

The way in which the women of that house--without exception--every one of 'em--

married and single--took to that boy when they heard the story, Boots considers

surprising. It was as much as he could do to keep 'em from dashing into the room and

kissing him. They climbed up all sorts of places, at the risk of their lives, to look at him

through a pane of glass. They was seven deep at the keyhole. They was out of their minds

about him and his bold spirit.

In the evening, Boots went into the room to see how the runaway couple was getting on.

The gentleman was on the window-seat, supporting the lady in his arms. She had tears

upon her face, and was lying, very tired and half asleep, with her head upon his shoulder.

"Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, fatigued, sir?" says Cobbs.

"Yes, she is tired, Cobbs; but she is not used to be away from home, and she has been in

low spirits again. Cobbs, do you think you could bring a biffin, please?"

"I ask your pardon, sir," says Cobbs. "What was it you--?"

"I think a Norfolk biffin would rouse her, Cobbs. She is very fond of them."

Boots withdrew in search of the required restorative, and when he brought it in, the

gentleman handed it to the lady, and fed her with a spoon, and took a little himself; the

lady being heavy with sleep, and rather cross. "What should you think, sir," says Cobbs,

"of a chamber candlestick?" The gentleman approved; the chambermaid went first, up the

great staircase; the lady, in her sky-blue mantle, followed, gallantly escorted by the

gentleman; the gentleman embraced her at her door, and retired to his own apartment,

where Boots softly locked him up.

Boots couldn't but feel with increased acuteness what a base deceiver he was, when they

consulted him at breakfast (they had ordered sweet milk-and-water, and toast and currant

jelly, overnight) about the pony. It really was as much as he could do, he don't mind

confessing to me, to look them two young things in the face, and think what a wicked old

father of lies he had grown up to be. Howsomever, he went on a lying like a Trojan about

the pony. He told 'em that it did so unfortunately happen that the pony was half clipped,

you see, and that he couldn't be taken out in that state, for fear it should strike to his

inside. But that he'd be finished clipping in the course of the day, and that to-morrow

morning at eight o'clock the peyton would be ready. Boots's view of the whole case,

looking back on it in my room, is, that Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, was beginning to

give in. She hadn't had her hair curled when she went to bed, and she didn't seem quite up

to brushing it herself, and it's getting in her eyes put her out. But nothing put out Master

Harry. He sat behind his breakfast-cup, a tearing away at the jelly, as if he had been his

own father.

After breakfast, Boots is inclined to consider that they drawed soldiers,--at least, he

knows that many such was found in the fire- place, all on horseback. In the course of the

morning, Master Harry rang the bell,--it was surprising how that there boy did carry on,--

and said, in a sprightly way, "Cobbs, is there any good walks in this neighbourhood?"

"Yes, sir," says Cobbs. "There's Love Lane."

"Get out with you, Cobbs!"--that was that there boy's expression,-- "you're joking."

"Begging your pardon, sir," says Cobbs, "there really is Love Lane. And a pleasant walk

it is, and proud shall I be to show it to yourself and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior."

"Norah, dear," said Master Harry, "this is curious. We really ought to see Love Lane. Put

on your bonnet, my sweetest darling, and we will go there with Cobbs."

Boots leaves me to judge what a Beast he felt himself to be, when that young pair told

him, as they all three jogged along together, that they had made up their minds to give

him two thousand guineas a year as head-gardener, on accounts of his being so true a

friend to 'em. Boots could have wished at the moment that the earth would have opened

and swallowed him up, he felt so mean, with their beaming eyes a looking at him, and

believing him. Well, sir, he turned the conversation as well as he could, and he took 'em

down Love Lane to the water-meadows, and there Master Harry would have drowned

himself in half a moment more, a getting out a water-lily for her,--but nothing daunted

that boy. Well, sir, they was tired out. All being so new and strange to 'em, they was tired

as tired could be. And they laid down on a bank of daisies, like the children in the wood,

leastways meadows, and fell asleep.

Boots don't know--perhaps I do,--but never mind, it don't signify either way--why it made

a man fit to make a fool of himself to see them two pretty babies a lying there in the clear

still sunny day, not dreaming half so hard when they was asleep as they done when they

was awake. But, Lord! when you come to think of yourself, you know, and what a game

you have been up to ever since you was in your own cradle, and what a poor sort of a

chap you are, and how it's always either Yesterday with you, or else Tomorrow, and

never To- day, that's where it is!

Well, sir, they woke up at last, and then one thing was getting pretty clear to Boots,

namely, that Mrs. Harry Walmerses, Junior's, temper was on the move. When Master

Harry took her round the waist, she said he "teased her so;" and when he says, "Norah,

my young May Moon, your Harry tease you?" she tells him, "Yes; and I want to go

Home!"

A boiled fowl, and baked bread-and-butter pudding, brought Mrs. Walmers up a little; but

Boots could have wished, he must privately own to me, to have seen her more sensible of

the voice of love, and less abandoning of herself to currants. However, Master Harry, he

kept up, and his noble heart was as fond as ever. Mrs. Walmers turned very sleepy about

dusk, and began to cry. Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off to bed as per yesterday; and

Master Harry ditto repeated.

About eleven or twelve at night comes back the Governor in a chaise, along with Mr.

Walmers and a elderly lady. Mr. Walmers looks amused and very serious, both at once,

and says to our missis, "We are much indebted to you, ma'am, for your kind care of our

little children, which we can never sufficiently acknowledge. Pray, ma'am, where is my

boy?" Our missis says, "Cobbs has the dear child in charge, sir. Cobbs, show Forty!"

Then he says to Cobbs, "Ah, Cobbs, I am glad to see you! I understood you was here!"

And Cobbs says, "Yes, sir. Your most obedient, sir."

I may be surprised to hear Boots say it, perhaps; but Boots assures me that his heart beat

like a hammer, going up-stairs. "I beg your pardon, sir," says he, while unlocking the

door; "I hope you are not angry with Master Harry. For Master Harry is a fine boy, sir,

and will do you credit and honour." And Boots signifies to me, that, if the fine boy's

father had contradicted him in the daring state of mind in which he then was, he thinks he

should have "fetched him a crack," and taken the consequences.

But Mr. Walmers only says, "No, Cobbs. No, my good fellow. Thank you!" And, the

door being opened, goes in.

Boots goes in too, holding the light, and he sees Mr. Walmers go up to the bedside, bend

gently down, and kiss the little sleeping face. Then he stands looking at it for a minute,

looking wonderfully like it (they do say he ran away with Mrs. Walmers); and then he

gently shakes the little shoulder.

"Harry, my dear boy! Harry!"

Master Harry starts up and looks at him. Looks at Cobbs too. Such is the honour of that

mite, that he looks at Cobbs, to see whether he has brought him into trouble.

"I am not angry, my child. I only want you to dress yourself and come home."

"Yes, pa."

Master Harry dresses himself quickly. His breast begins to swell when he has nearly

finished, and it swells more and more as he stands, at last, a looking at his father: his

father standing a looking at him, the quiet image of him.

"Please may I"--the spirit of that little creature, and the way he kept his rising tears down!-

-"please, dear pa--may I--kiss Norah before I go?"

"You may, my child."

So he takes Master Harry in his hand, and Boots leads the way with the candle, and they

come to that other bedroom, where the elderly lady is seated by the bed, and poor little

Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, is fast asleep. There the father lifts the child up to the

pillow, and he lays his little face down for an instant by the little warm face of poor

unconscious little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, and gently draws it to him,--a sight so

touching to the chambermaids who are peeping through the door, that one of them calls

out, "It's a shame to part 'em!" But this chambermaid was always, as Boots informs me, a

soft-hearted one. Not that there was any harm in that girl. Far from it.

Finally, Boots says, that's all about it. Mr. Walmers drove away in the chaise, having hold

of Master Harry's hand. The elderly lady and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, that was never

to be (she married a Captain long afterwards, and died in India), went off next day. In

conclusion, Boots put it to me whether I hold with him in two opinions: firstly, that there

are not many couples on their way to be married who are half as innocent of guile as

those two children; secondly, that it would be a jolly good thing for a great many couples

on their way to be married, if they could only be stopped in time, and brought back

Separately.

THIRD BRANCH -- THE BILL

I had been snowed up a whole week. The time had hung so lightly on my hands, that I

should have been in great doubt of the fact but for a piece of documentary evidence that

lay upon my table.

The road had been dug out of the snow on the previous day, and the document in question

was my bill. It testified emphatically to my having eaten and drunk, and warmed myself,

and slept among the sheltering branches of the Holly-Tree, seven days and nights.

I had yesterday allowed the road twenty-four hours to improve itself, finding that I

required that additional margin of time for the completion of my task. I had ordered my

Bill to be upon the table, and a chaise to be at the door, "at eight o'clock to-morrow

evening." It was eight o'clock to-morrow evening when I buckled up my travelling

writing-desk in its leather case, paid my Bill, and got on my warm coats and wrappers. Of

course, no time now remained for my travelling on to add a frozen tear to the icicles

which were doubtless hanging plentifully about the farmhouse where I had first seen

Angela. What I had to do was to get across to Liverpool by the shortest open road, there

to meet my heavy baggage and embark. It was quite enough to do, and I had not an hour

too much time to do it in.

I had taken leave of all my Holly-Tree friends--almost, for the time being, of my

bashfulness too--and was standing for half a minute at the Inn door watching the ostler as

he took another turn at the cord which tied my portmanteau on the chaise, when I saw

lamps coming down towards the Holly-Tree. The road was so padded with snow that no

wheels were audible; but all of us who were standing at the Inn door saw lamps coming

on, and at a lively rate too, between the walls of snow that had been heaped up on either

side of the track. The chambermaid instantly divined how the case stood, and called to

the ostler, "Tom, this is a Gretna job!" The ostler, knowing that her sex instinctively

scented a marriage, or anything in that direction, rushed up the yard bawling, "Next four

out!" and in a moment the whole establishment was thrown into commotion.

I had a melancholy interest in seeing the happy man who loved and was beloved; and

therefore, instead of driving off at once, I remained at the Inn door when the fugitives

drove up. A bright-eyed fellow, muffled in a mantle, jumped out so briskly that he almost

overthrew me. He turned to apologise, and, by heaven, it was Edwin!

"Charley!" said he, recoiling. "Gracious powers, what do you do here?"

"Edwin," said I, recoiling, "gracious powers, what do you do here?" I struck my forehead

as I said it, and an insupportable blaze of light seemed to shoot before my eyes.

He hurried me into the little parlour (always kept with a slow fire in it and no poker),

where posting company waited while their horses were putting to, and, shutting the door,

Said:

"Charley, forgive me!"

"Edwin!" I returned. "Was this well? When I loved her so dearly! When I had garnered

up my heart so long!" I could say no more.

He was shocked when he saw how moved I was, and made the cruel observation, that he

had not thought I should have taken it so much to heart.

I looked at him. I reproached him no more. But I looked at him. "My dear, dear Charley,"

said he, "don't think ill of me, I beseech you! I know you have a right to my utmost

confidence, and, believe me, you have ever had it until now. I abhor secrecy. Its

meanness is intolerable to me. But I and my dear girl have observed it for your sake."

He and his dear girl! It steeled me.

"You have observed it for my sake, sir?" said I, wondering how his frank face could face

it out so.

"Yes!--and Angela's," said he.

I found the room reeling round in an uncertain way, like a labouring, humming-top.

"Explain yourself," said I, holding on by one hand to an arm-chair.

"Dear old darling Charley!" returned Edwin, in his cordial manner, "consider! When you

were going on so happily with Angela, why should I compromise you with the old

gentleman by making you a party to our engagement, and (after he had declined my

proposals) to our secret intention? Surely it was better that you should be able honourably

to say, 'He never took counsel with me, never told me, never breathed a word of it.' If

Angela suspected it, and showed me all the favour and support she could--God bless her

for a precious creature and a priceless wife!--I couldn't help that. Neither I nor Emmeline

ever told her, any more than we told you. And for the same good reason, Charley; trust

me, for the same good reason, and no other upon earth!"

Emmeline was Angela's cousin. Lived with her. Had been brought up with her. Was her

father's ward. Had property.

"Emmeline is in the chaise, my dear Edwin!" said I, embracing him with the greatest

affection.

"My good fellow!" said he, "do you suppose I should be going to Gretna Green without

Her?"

I ran out with Edwin, I opened the chaise door, I took Emmeline in my arms, I folded her

to my heart. She was wrapped in soft white fur, like the snowy landscape: but was warm,

and young, and lovely. I put their leaders to with my own hands, I gave the boys a fivepound

note apiece, I cheered them as they drove away, I drove the other way myself as

hard as I could pelt.

I never went to Liverpool, I never went to America, I went straight back to London, and I

married Angela. I have never until this time, even to her, disclosed the secret of my

character, and the mistrust and the mistaken journey into which it led me. When she, and

they, and our eight children and their seven--I mean Edwin and Emmeline's, whose oldest

girl is old enough now to wear white for herself, and to look very like her mother in it--

come to read these pages, as of course they will, I shall hardly fail to be found out at last.

Never mind! I can bear it. I began at the Holly-Tree, by idle accident, to associate the

Christmas time of year with human interest, and with some inquiry into, and some care

for, the lives of those by whom I find myself surrounded. I hope that I am none the worse

for it, and that no one near me or afar off is the worse for it. And I say, May the green

Holly-Tree flourish, striking its roots deep into our English ground, and having its

germinating qualities carried by the birds of Heaven all over the world!