It is quite true, I never really intended he should trouble himself in the matter; but when the fated evening came, when the loving Alicia, arrayed in satin and white roses, was awaiting her lover, who was preparing to run away with her rival, I thought it better to despatch him to my charmer than to leave him at Mrs. Pickup's, whence he might stray at a moment's warning, and, indeed, with no warning at all. It was quite necessary to have him out of the way; for which reason I sent him to the house where Alicia was in waiting, with a special message to the lady, to make his introduction the more easy, and a thousand instructions in relation to nothing. It was fortunate that my cousin Sammy, though as great a rustic as ever lived, was, as little troubled with bashfulness as wisdom. Hence I found no difficulty in despatching him to my inamorata, whom he had never laid eyes on, and to her friends, with regard to whom I was in the same predicament. I promised to follow him in a short time, and thus, to my great joy, succeeded in getting him out of the way. CHAPTER XX. THE GUESTS THAT SHEPPARD LEE INVITED TO HIS WEDDING. The appointed hour drew nigh, and all things had gone on swimmingly with one single exception. The persecution I had endured from Messrs. Sniggles, Snip, & Co. the day before, I was fated once more to endure; for, going home to my lodgings about dusk to put on my best shirt, I found my chief creditors assembled in solemn divan, or rather in warlike ambush; and such a troop of bears and wolves as they were was perhaps never seen by an unfortunate gentleman before. What had brought them together, especially at such an unlucky moment, it was impossible to divine; but it seems they had had in consideration the state of my affairs and prospects, and had just come to the conclusion, as I entered, that they were none the better off for the coming of my uncle Wilkins, who (for it appeared the villain Sniggles had been sounding him on the subject) had disavowed all responsibility for my debts, and all disposition to discharge them, in terms not to be mistaken. It had just been resolved, _nem. con._, as the saying is, that I had cheated them, that I was cheating them, and that I would cheat them as long as I could, and that terms, therefore, should be kept with me no longer. To this moment my flesh creeps when I think of the yell the villains set up when I stumbled among them, and the audacity with which they heaped on my devoted head their upbraidings, menaces, and maledictions. They used highly uncivil language, and some laid their defiling fingers upon my collar, while all, as with one voice, cried out to carry me before an alderman, and make a public spectacle of me at once.