PAUL CLIFFORD, Volume 5.

By Edward Bulwer-Lytton



CHAPTER XXII.

Outlaw. Stand, sir, and throw us that you have about you!

Val. Ruffians, forego that rude, uncivil touch!

The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

On leaving the scene in which he had been so unwelcome a guest, Clifford
hastened to the little inn where he had left his horse. He mounted and
returned to Bath. His thoughts were absent, and he unconsciously
suffered the horse to direct its course whither it pleased. This was
naturally towards the nearest halting-place which the animal remembered;
and this halting-place was at that illustrious tavern, in the suburbs of
the town, in which we have before commemorated Clifford's re-election to
the dignity of chief. It was a house of long-established reputation; and
here news of any of the absent confederates was always to be obtained.
This circumstance, added to the excellence of its drink, its ease, and
the electric chain of early habits, rendered it a favourite haunt, even
despite their present gay and modish pursuits, with Tomlinson and Pepper;
and here, when Clifford sought the pair at unseasonable hours, was he for
the most part sure to find them. As his meditations were interrupted by
the sudden stopping of his horse beneath the well-known sign, Clifford,
muttering an angry malediction on the animal, spurred it onward in the