"What else could I do?" rejoined Frank, "unless I turned in supperless to bed, or had it brought up to me there, neither of which suited my inclination--for, you see, what the rain we encountered had left undone in the drenching way, the brook I blundered over head and ears into had completely effected; and though my subsequent souse just afterwards into the fishpond could make me no wetter, that deficiency was amply made up for in mud; and as I had thrown off my knapsack, I had no precise notion where, in order that I might run all the lighter without it, which has only just now been picked up and returned to me, and so not a dry rag of my own to help myself to, I was right glad to rig myself out in the squire's clothes, which, fitting me like what our friend the admiral would say, 'purser's shirt upon a handspike,' made me look for all the world like an unstuffed effigy of a Guy Fawkes--a figure so superlatively ridiculous, that two light-hearted young girls, who were unable to help wellnigh laughing themselves from off their horses' backs at the sight of a youthful poet employing his nose as a pick-axe, could scarcely be expected to look unmoved on so ludicrous an object as I was." "Spare me, Frank--spare me!" exclaimed Vernon. "How shall I be able to remove the ridiculous association which must be connected with that unlucky tumble?" "The more important one you made so shortly afterwards, I'll undertake to say, will produce the desired effect," said Frank. "Oh! don't talk about that now, pray," interposed Vernon with a shudder, and turning pale at the sudden recollection of his recent peril; which Frank perceiving, and aware of the indiscretion he had so thoughtlessly committed by alluding to, and to avert his friend's mind from dwelling any longer upon it, he rattled on as fast as he could about various other matters, describing in glowing terms all he had seen, heard, or conjectured, about the place they were then in. "What a contrast," he said, "the mere separation of a narrow valley has made between the desolate wastes we have traversed for the last two days, and the fertile spot where we now are, which, though deficient in timber, is beyond measure fertile in corn, and contains, I am told, some excellent shooting--that is partridge shooting; for a pheasant is here a kind of _rara avis in terris_, and as little likely to be met with as the very black swan itself; but then it's a fine country for woodcocks, whilst the bottoms almost swarm with snipes; all of which the squire has promised to show me in the course of the day, and for days to come, if I feel so inclined; for he won't hear a word of our leaving for at least ten days, or a week at the very shortest." "But how, my dear fellow, can we accept an invitation of this kind from an utter stranger, whom"----