“What next! what next!” demanded the offended and, as she was fain to believe, neglected wife, under the impression that it was her truant husband, making his tardy return to his domestic allegiance, who had thus presumed to disturb her slumbers. “Is it not enough that you have eloped from my bed and board, for a long night, but you must dare to break in on the natural rest of a whole family, seven blessed children, without counting their mother! O Hector! Hector! an example are you getting to be to the young and giddy, and a warning will you yet prove to the unthoughtful!” “Bring hither the black book,” said the publican to his wife, who had been drawn to a window by the lamentations of Desire; “I think the woman said something about starting on a journey between two days; and, if such has been the philosophy of the good-man, it behoves all honest people to look into their accounts. Ay, as I live, Keziah, you have let the limping beggar get seventeen and sixpence into arrears, and that for such trifles as morning-drams and night-caps!” “You are wrathy, friend, without reason; the man has made a garment for the boy at school, and found the”— “Hush, good woman,” interrupted her husband returning the book, and making a sign for her to retire; “I dare say it will all come round in proper Time, and the less noise we make about the backslidings of a neighbour, the less will be said of our own transgressions. A worthy and hard-working mechanic, sir,” he continued, addressing the stranger “but a man who could never get the sun to shine in at his windows, though, Heaven knows, the glass is none too thick for such a blessing.” “And do you imagine on evidence as slight as this we have seen, that such a man has actually absconded?” “Why, it is a calamity that has befallen his betters!” returned the publican, interlocking his fingers across the rotundity of his person, with an air of grave consideration. “We inn-keepers—who live, as it were, in plain sight of every man’s secrets; for it is after a visit to us that one is apt truly to open his heart—should know something of the affairs of a neighbourhood. If the good-man Homespun could smooth down the temper of his companion as easily as he lays a seam into its place, the thing might not occur, but——Do you drink this morning, sir?” “A drop of your best.” “As I was saying,” continued the other, while he furnished his customer, according to his desire, “if a tailor’s goose would take the wrinkles out of the ruffled temper of a woman, as it does out of the cloth; and then, if, after it had done this task, a man might eat it, as he would yonder bird hanging behind my bar—Perhaps you will have occasion to make your dinner with us, too, sir?” “I cannot say I shall not,” returned the stranger, paying for the dram he had barely tasted; “it greatly depends on the result of my inquiries concerning the different vessels in the port.”