"Now, that's what I call being d--d stupid!" cried Willy Small, much to Beauchamp's surprise, who at first concluded that the smuggler's censure was addressed to him. "If my old woman did not send me up on purpose to tell your honor that she had done you three mackerel, and that, with a rasher of pickled pork, and some fried--" "Good Heaven!" cried Beauchamp, "I trust that she does not intend me to eat three mackerel, pickled pork, and fried any thing! But never mind--let me see them, by all means. I will eat what I can, and she must excuse me the rest." Beauchamp's dinner was accordingly placed before him; and, with his usual perversity of disposition, it must be acknowledged that, in a smuggler's cottage, with a lame leg, and disappointed in love, he ate a better dinner of mackerel in October, salted pork, and fried eggs, than he had done since he left the Grand St. Bernard. There's a hero! Ulysses was nothing to him, though, dressed, in a dishclout, the hero of the Odyssey did sit down with twenty fellows who were making love to his own wife, and supped heartily upon "the entrails fat, enriched with blood," by which Homer undoubtedly meant black puddings. When he had concluded--as Beauchamp could, when he liked it, cast off his reserve, mingle freely with all classes, and examine nature wherever he found it--he declared that, as the evening was somewhat chilly, he would come down and spend the rest of it by the kitchen fire; and, getting to the bottom of the stairs the best way he could, by the help of the old man and his son, he soon rendered himself familiar with the whole family, winning their love, while he made them more and more inclined to declare that he was really a gentleman.