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