My friend Sir Roger de Coverley, when we last met together at the club, told me that he had a great mind to see the new tragedy with me, assuring me at the same time that he had not been at a play these twenty years. (10) "The last I saw," said Sir Roger, "was the _Committee_, which I should not have gone to, neither, had not I been told beforehand that it was a good Church of England comedy." He then proceeded to inquire of me who this distressed mother was; and upon hearing that she was (15) Hector's widow, he told me that her husband was a brave man, and that when he was a schoolboy he had read his life at the end of the dictionary. My friend asked me, in the next place, if there would not be some danger in coming home late, in case the Mohocks should be abroad. "I assure you," says he, "I thought I had fallen into their hands last night, for I observed two or three lusty black[146] men that followed me half way up Fleet Street, and mended their pace behind me in proportion as I put on (196: 5) to get away from them. You must know," continued the knight, with a smile, "I fancied they had a mind to _hunt_ me, for I remember an honest gentleman in my neighbourhood who was served such a trick in King Charles the Second's time; for which reason he has not ventured himself (10) in town ever since. I might have shown them very good sport had this been their design; for, as I am an old fox-hunter, I should have turned and dodged, and have played them a thousand tricks they had never seen in their lives before." Sir Roger added that if these gentlemen (15) had any such intention they did not succeed very well in it; "for I threw them out," says he, "at the end of Norfolk Street, where I doubled the corner and got shelter in my lodgings before they could imagine what was become of me. However," says the knight, "if Captain (20) Sentry will make one with us to-morrow night, and if you will both of you call upon me about four o'clock, that we may be at the house before it is full, I will have my own coach in readiness to attend you, for John tells me he has got the fore wheels mended." (25) [146] Perhaps in black masks.