"I' faith, you talk sense, Phil!" said Zed; "confound the great folks! let 'em take their land! We've managed to push along through threescore summers and more, and we can manage to get through, I think, now. But, swape in, Phil! for we're just alongside Littleborough again, and I'm so hungry that I feel inclined to step on shore, and ask for a bite of the wedding-cake this morning: I'll warrant 'em they'll be keeping up the merriment yet." "Promise me one thing, though, Zed," said Phil,—"that you'll take no more rum, if they offer it you, and that you won't stay longer than a couple of hours or so." "Don't think I shall play the fool twice over!" retorted Zed; "I'll warrant it I'll come away as sober as a judge this time, and take no more fool's tricks into my head to-day." "'Don't say so till you're sure!'" observed Phil, in his usual sly way; but Zed did not answer, for they were now at shore, and the fisherman had leaped out, and was once more mooring the little boat. It is hardly necessary to relate that Zed found it impossible to keep his hasty promise of a very short stay, seeing that the "Weddingers" were "keeping it up" in true old-fashioned style, and Phil's fiddle became, right soon, the very soul of their merriment. Phil, however, had made his mind up, and succeeded, though with great effort, in getting his old companion once more fairly afloat and on the way home about an hour before sunset. Although Zed had, indeed, the virtue to refuse the parting cup of rum, when it was offered, yet his old noddle was far from being its own perfect master, by reason of his frequent revisitations of the ale-pottle; and the first mile on the water was all music of the most gleeful nature with the old voyagers. "Indeed," as Phil himself used to say, when talking about it, "we had each of us whetted our whistles till will-ye, nil-ye, we must pipe, and couldn't help it!" They were trolling forth, for the last time, their old burthen of "Says I to myself, says I, Though I can't laugh, I won't cry; Let 'em kill us that dare; they're all fools that care: We all shall live till we die!" when the report of a gun, and the sudden flight of a drooping heron across the Trent, arrested their music. "By Jingo! she's a dead bird, in three minutes!" exclaimed Zed; "mark how her right wing droops, Phil!" "I wish I could mark it," said Phil; "but you always forget that my poor old eyes are blanks, when you've——" "There she goes, plop among the osiers!" cried Zed, in an ecstasy; "pull away to the larboard, Phil. I'll have her in a twink." "'Don't say so till you're sure!'" observed Phil, but pulled away like a dragon in the direction recommended by his companion, nevertheless.