Nothing, however, occurred to vary the monotony of his way, beyond encountering now and again some solitary pedestrian, probably as honest and sober as himself, and here and there some few yards from the road, a group of wayfarers bound for Newmarket, encamped upon the stunted turf round the smouldering embers of their hastily kindled fire. Towards three o'clock he reached the large wayside hostelry at Chesterford called the Blue Bear, where travellers from London always stopped to change horses. Here, before the big wooden horse-trough in front of the main door, Lee slackened his rein; and while Stars and Garters gratefully drank in the cool clear water, he called for a jack of ale for his own refreshment. The drawer was, however, so slow in getting his drowsy wits together, that when at last he did hand up the jack; he found that he was holding it in empty space, and his customer had disappeared. [Sidenote: In a mighty hurry.] "He wor in a mighty hurry," grumbled the man, as he stood listening for a few moments to the fast dying sounds of the horse's feet, and then stooped down to grope by the light of the lantern swinging to the sign-post, after the coin which Lee had flung down in discharge of the reckoning for the refreshment he had not stayed to enjoy. "Well, he must be a woundly wittol be sure, or his business is such a rare pressing one, that he can spare to pass by this;" and he gazed affectionately into the ale's clear amber deeps, "as if 'twere no more'n a cup o' fleet milk. Didn't the king's own self say, but t'other day, last time he comed by, and drinked his nippet o't, that naught o' the stuff in his Whitehall cellars don't hold a rushlight to't? Maaster'd be monsus put about, ef he comed to know of its being scorned so. Naa, Naa," he went on, putting the jack to his lips. "I shudn't dare let him knaw as my fine young gen'leman didn't drink so much as his neckum out o't;" and the charitable creature, to conceal the traveller's shortcoming, took a draught, so long and deep, that it absorbed two-thirds of the liquor, "there goes Sinkum--and," he said, drawing a long breath of satisfaction, and again contemplating the interior of the jug, "an' seein' as him as doan't knaa how to finish a job when he's begun't, but a poor sort o' creetur, why," and tipping up the jack, he emptied the remainder of its contents down his throat, "there goes Swankum after 'em." And having thus vindicated the honour of the house, he turned in to renew his interrupted slumbers. [Sidenote: The day dawns.]