The next step that I intended to take was to obtain the consent of my father. Accordingly, I took leave of Molly for a time, stating that I had to absent myself on business, and promising a speedy return. I entered the stage and arrived at our village, where I put up at my father's inn. It was towards evening when I arrived. "Landlord!" I cried, disguising my voice, "I wish to dine in half-an-hour." "Yes, sir," said my father, coming towards me, bowing, and rubbing his hands. "Have you got a good bed?" asked I, "for I wish to sleep here to-night." "Yes, sir, capital beds, sir," said my father, "both clean and well aired." "Very well, then, make me up one," said I, pompously. "It shall be done, sir," said my father, obsequiously. I occupied myself with reading until dinner-time. At length the dinner came up. "A pint of your best port, landlord," I cried, magnificently. My father returned with the port, crusted and cob-webbed, from the cellar, and I began my dinner. Having finished, I filled my pipe, and whilst my father cleared the table, I deigned to enter into conversation with him. I began by asking him the number of inhabitants in the village, and then brought him out upon the subject of the epidemic. "Ah! sir," said my father, deeply moved, "it carried off my only son some three weeks ago, and a finer lad you wouldn't see in all England. I hoped that he would have been the prop of my old age, but he was carried off, sir, along with the rest--struck down in the very spring of his youth, as you may say. Only nineteen was my poor boy when he was taken from me," and my father's eyes moistened as he spoke. "Only nineteen!" I exclaimed. "Was he not strong?" "Strong, sir! I believe you--strong as a lion," said my father. "Dear me!" I said, "it is very strange that his youth and strength did not resist the malady." "So everyone said, sir," replied my father, "but--but he had been ailing for some time before." "What was his complaint before he caught this disease?" I asked. "Ah! sir, that's just the point," answered my father. "I sadly fear that it was an epidemic of a more dangerous sort." "How so?" asked I. "What do you mean?" "Well, sir, my real opinion is now that the young man was too strongly attached to a maid whom he couldn't marry, and that undermined his health. Then came the epidemic, which he had not sufficient strength to shake off." "Ah!" said I, "and why could he not marry her? Was the maid unrelenting?" "Not that, exactly, sir. Indeed, I believe she was as much in love with him, but----" "But what?"