teeth; and here and there the ivy, like a warm garment to comfort it in
its age, wrapt its green leaves closely round the time-worn walls.

It was a hale and hearty age though, still: and in the summer or
autumn evenings, when the glow of the setting sun fell upon the oak and
chestnut trees of the adjacent forest, the old house, partaking of its
lustre, seemed their fit companion, and to have many good years of life
in him yet.

The evening with which we have to do, was neither a summer nor an autumn
one, but the twilight of a day in March, when the wind howled dismally
among the bare branches of the trees, and rumbling in the wide chimneys
and driving the rain against the windows of the Maypole Inn, gave such
of its frequenters as chanced to be there at the moment an undeniable
reason for prolonging their stay, and caused the landlord to prophesy
that the night would certainly clear at eleven o'clock precisely,--which
by a remarkable coincidence was the hour at which he always closed his
house.

The name of him upon whom the spirit of prophecy thus descended was
John Willet, a burly, large-headed man with a fat face, which betokened
profound obstinacy and slowness of apprehension, combined with a very
strong reliance upon his own merits. It was John Willet's ordinary
boast in his more placid moods that if he were slow he was sure; which
assertion could, in one sense at least, be by no means gainsaid, seeing
that he was in everything unquestionably the reverse of fast, and withal
one of the most dogged and positive fellows in existence--always sure
that what he thought or said or did was right, and holding it as a thing
quite settled and ordained by the laws of nature and Providence, that
anybody who said or did or thought otherwise must be inevitably and of