He glided into the room and crept along by the wall, with the most infernal ceremony and politeness, to the inner recess of the chimney corner, without having once shown his back to his hostess or any of the good company there assembled, and quickly finding himself comfortably seated, the queer little old gentleman produced a blackened ‘Dudeen’ and a velvet tobacco pouch, but somehow or other the clouds of smoke he emitted were so pervaded with the smell of brimstone and bitumen, that the rest of the guests did nothing but sneeze and knock their heads together in a regular hob-and-nob fashion. To stop this nuisance, the worthy hostess placed before her mysterious guest a frizzing hot dish of eggs and bacon, but upon tasting the same, he expressed his dissatisfaction, declaring it was as cold as charity, and demanding ‘more pepper.’ He, upon receiving it, emptied the contents of the pepper-box over the dish, and having thus formed a regular _pate au diable_, he swallowed it down with considerable apparent relish. With the ale it was pretty much the same; the hostess first mulled it, but her refractory guest declared it was as cold as ice; then she boiled it with a vast quantity of ginger, but with little better success, and it could only be brought to suit his fiery palate by being stirred up, when boiling, with a red hot poker. These strange proceedings of the mysterious visitor mightily astonished the rest of the guests, their faces becoming much elongated; and after staring at each other in stupified bewilderment, they stealthily took to their homes, exclaiming, ‘Did you ever see the Devil?’ The whole of the company had departed long ere the cause of their uneasiness left his chimney corner and glided to his sleeping apartment, which he managed to do in the same mysterious manner as he had entered the house, never once removing his back from the wall. About three o’clock in the morning, our worthy hostess of ‘The Jolly Shepherd’ was awakened from her balmy slumbers, by a strange thumping, bumping kind of noise just under her window, seeming to resemble the hubbub made by a shoal of whales or other such lumbering monsters, who had quitted the ocean deep, and taken to wallowing and gambolling along the Downs by way of pastime. The trooper’s widow possessed a bold heart, and, added thereto, she had a woman’s curiosity, which induced her to creep out of bed, and cautiously to take a peep at what was going on. She was amazed? She did not behold half a dozen Leviathans having a game at leap-frog, nor the like number of griffins playing at snap-dragon. No, no, nothing of that sort; but the queer little old gentleman aforesaid, mounted on a pair of lofty stilts, with a huge spade in his hand, was digging away at the edge of the ancient Roman encampment, like the