the fashion, lay thick, and of a grizzled black, on the brawny shoulders
below. The veteran was dressed in a blue coat, originally a frock; but
the skirts, having once, to the imminent peril of the place they guarded,
caught fire, as the Corporal stood basking himself at Peter Dealtry's,
had been so far amputated, as to leave only the stump of a tail, which
just covered, and no more, that part which neither Art in bipeds nor
Nature in quadrupeds loves to leave wholly exposed. And that part, ah,
how ample! had Liston seen it, he would have hid for ever his diminished-
-opposite to head!--No wonder the Corporal had been so annoyed by the
parcel of the previous day, a coat so short, and a--; but no matter, pass
we to the rest! It was not only in its skirts that this wicked coat was
deficient; the Corporal, who had within the last few years thriven
lustily in the inactive serenity of Grassdale, had outgrown it
prodigiously across the chest and girth; nevertheless he managed to
button it up. And thus the muscular proportions of the wearer bursting
forth in all quarters, gave him the ludicrous appearance of a gigantic
schoolboy. His wrists, and large sinewy hands, both employed at the
bridle of his hard-mouthed charger, were markedly visible; for it was the
Corporal's custom whenever he came into an obscure part of the road,
carefully to take off, and prudently to pocket, a pair of scrupulously
clean white leather gloves which smartened up his appearance prodigiously
in passing through the towns in their route. His breeches were of yellow
buckskin, and ineffably tight; his stockings were of grey worsted, and a
pair of laced boots, that reached the ascent of a very mountainous calf,
but declined any farther progress, completed his attire.

Fancy then this figure, seated with laborious and unswerving
perpendicularity on a demi-pique saddle, ornamented with a huge pair of
well-stuffed saddle-bags, and holsters revealing the stocks of a brace of
immense pistols, the horse with its obstinate mouth thrust out, and the