It was the boast of old Samuel Gough, who, during a period of thirty-two years, had been landlord of The Chough and Stump,--a little, old-fashioned house, with carved oaken angels supporting the roof of its porch,--that, notwithstanding the largest road-side farm-house in the village had been licensed and beautified; though tiles had been substituted for its old thatch; a blue sign, with yellow letters, fixed over its entrance; and a finger-post erected at the top of the lane, about the middle of which his own tenement stood, directing travellers to The New Inn,--The Chough and Stump still “bore the bell.” “Richard Cockle,” he would often say, “being twenty years butler to old 'Squire Borfield, ha' made friends among the gentlefolks. The petty sessions is held in his best parlour, now and then; he hath a' got a pair of post-horses, and tidy tits they be, I must say; his house is made post-office; and excise-office, to the tail o' that--for this and the five nearest parishes; he pays for a wine license, and hath two or three gentlevolks, may be, once a month, for an hour or two; but not much oftener, as there be few do travel our cross-country road; and he do call one room in his house a tap:--but for all that, and his powdered head to boot, gi' me The Chough and Stump still.” Gough's boast was not altogether without warranty: his comfortable, old-fashioned kitchen, with its bacon-rack, broad hearth, dingy walls, and rude mantel-slab, enriched with strange hieroglyphical scratches, in which his neighbours traced, or affected to trace, the names of their grandfathers, was endeared to the inhabitants of the village;--there were old feelings, and pleasant associations connected with it Sam Gough was a jolly host, who regaled himself, among his guests, from morning till night; habitual drinking, for along time, having rendered him, as Abel Harris, the schoolmaster of the village, said, “invulnerable to intoxication he not only could, but often did, sing a good old song, and tell a good old story;--never repeating either the one or the other on the same day; for he was orderly in his entertainment, and had his Monday's songs and his Tuesday's songs, as well as his morning stories and his evening jokes: he never sponged upon a customer but paid his share of the reckoning to his wife, who officiated as mistress, while he appeared to be only a constant guest. His ale was generally clear as amber, sweet as milk, and strong as brandy.” In the tap of The New Inn, which was the name of the rival house, the company generally consisted of the postilion and ostler of the establishment, a few out-door servants from some of the neighbouring gentlemen's houses, and three or four of the gayest, youthful, village bucks: but the elderly and middle-aged men,--“the substantial,” as Abel Harris called them, usually congregated, to smoke their evening pipes, round the oak in front of The Chough and Stump,