lauk! but the captain was a sensible man, and liked a cow as well as a
calf."

"So, so! on the road, are they?" cried Clifford, musingly, and without
heeding the insinuated attack on his decorum. "But answer me, what is
the plan? Be quick!"

"Why," replied the dame, "there's some swell cove of a lord gives a blow-
out to-day; and the lads, dear souls! think to play the queer on some
straggler."

Without uttering a word, Clifford darted from the house, and was
remounted before the old lady had time to recover her surprise.

"If you want to see them," cried she, as he put spurs to his horse, "they
ordered me to have supper ready at------" The horse's hoofs drowned the
last words of the dame; and carefully rebolting the door, and muttering
an invidious comparison between Captain Clifford and Captain Gloak, the
good landlady returned to those culinary operations destined to rejoice
the hearts of Tomlinson and Pepper.

Return we ourselves to Lucy. It so happened that the squire's carriage
was the last to arrive; for the coachman, long uninitiated among the
shades of Warlock into the dissipation of fashionable life, entered on
his debut at Bath, with all the vigorous heat of matured passions for the
first time released, into the festivities of the ale-house, and having a
milder master than most of his comrades, the fear of displeasure was less
strong in his aurigal bosom than the love of companionship; so that
during the time this gentleman was amusing himself, Lucy had ample
leisure for enjoying all the thousand-and-one reports of the scene