“I bowed respectfully to his worship, gave the clerk a questionable smile, and quitting the room, I made the best of my way to the public-house, where I had left my bundle and stick. “Another person had come in whilst we were away, and the landlady had told him about the girl running off and my being taken prisoner. This person was an attorney’s clerk, and he took up my cause earnestly, and advised me to prosecute the constable for a false imprisonment, he was giving me that advice when the constable returned. I pretended to entertain the project, and when the official became aware of the subject on which we were deliberating, he became very uneasy, and seemed almost willing to make any compromise rather than be under the clutches of the other ‘limb of the law.’ At length, after I had sufficiently tormented him, I agreed to a settlement, the terms of which were that he should pay for a quantity of ale, I and the attorney’s clerk, whom I found to be a queer, ironical fellow, agreeing to pay for as much to come in after his was drunk. “We had sat here rather a considerable time, and had got into high good humour with each other and the liquor, when the sounds of voices and a fiddle were heard approaching the house, and in a minute after in walked the girl we had prisoner in the morning, arm in arm with a young fellow, who, by his speech and dress, we recognised as the one with the patched face; in short, they were the two runaways, followed by some half a dozen young men, two young women, and an elderly person fiddling. They had been at church and had got wed, the banns having been published there some months before. They were now all ready for dancing, singing, and mirth; I scarcely ever saw a set of happier-looking countenances; the lad was in raptures; the bride seemed to have more self-command than any in the place. She thanked me most gratefully for the kindly feelings I had evinced; her husband joined her, and I found it of no use offering to break up from the wedding party. The constable was quite reconciled, as the charge, he said, would be taken off the township, and the ratepayers would deem it no bad day’s work of his. The attorney offered his friendly services in reconciling the squire’s coachman to the match, and the landlady brought in a posset of spiced ale for the wedding feast. The fiddler rosined his bow afresh, and played up a jig that set all the lads a-capering. In short, we ate and drank and danced the afternoon away. Evening followed, night came, and then the noon of night; and the last scenes I committed to memory were the fiddler falling from his chair and smashing his viol, and the attorney painting the constable’s face delicately with a blacking-brush whilst the latter person was fast asleep. [Sidenote: _THE HAUGHTY HOSTELRY_]