This question was not completely uncalled for, since for some few seconds Mr. M’Kinlay had turned to the landlord, and was occupied in the payment of his bill. “Seventeen shillings and fourpence, leaving eightpence for Thomas, Mr. Pugh; and remember that your driver is now fully paid, unless I should stay, to dinner.” “Are you a mindin’ of _me_, Sir?” said the Yankee, with an energy that actually made the other start, and sent a deeper crimson to his cheeks. “I must say, Sir--I will say, that, having no acquaintance with you, having never seen you till now---- “All your loss, stranger, that’s a fact! You’re not the first man that regretted he did not know the length of my boot before he put his foot on my corns. You’ll have to take them papers--do you mind?--you’ll have to take them papers, and give them to your friends up yonder!” “I’m neither a postman nor your messenger, Sir,” said M’Kinlay, getting into the chaise. “You’ll have to take them papers,” and he laid them on the seat of the carriage as he spoke, “that’s how it is! And, as sure as my name is Dodge!--Herodotus Manning Dodge!--you’d better give an account of ‘em when you drive out of that gate up there, for I’ll wait for you, if it was till next fall!” “That’s mighty plain talking, anyhow,” broke in a voice with a very distinctive accent, “and a man needn’t be much of a gentleman to understand it.” “Even a brief visit,” cried out the first speaker. “Just to see the cedars, or Clorinda’s grotto,” lisped out a female voice. But Mr. M’Kinlay did not wait for more, but by an admonitory poke of his umbrella set his driver off at full speed, and was soon well out of both eye and earshot. To say that Mr. M’Kinlay drove away in a towering passion--that he was excessively angry and indignant, would be the truth, but still not the whole truth, for he was also terribly frightened. There was in the tall Yankee’s look, language, and gesture, a something that smacked of the bush and the hickory-tree--a vague foreshadowing of Lynch law, or no law--that overpowered him. Such a man, within a reasonable distance of Scotland Yard, for instance, might not have proved so terrible; but here he was in the heart of the Welsh mountains, in the very spot of all others where there was every facility for a deed of violence. “He might throw me over that cliff, or pitch me into that quarry hole,” muttered he; and the landscape at the moment offered both the illustrations to aid his fancy. It was, then, in a tremor of mingled anger and terror that he drove up to the gate, and in no patient mood was it that he sat outside the padlocked portal till a messenger went up to the house with his card to obtain leave for his admission. The order was speedily given, and he passed in.