Presently she rose, her supper still unfinished, and took from a shelf, from among a medley of herbs and medicine bottles, a penny bottle of ink with a pen sticking in it. Searching in a drawer of the round table she found a large envelope on which was written, "Giant pennyworth of note." She took from it one of the thin bluish sheets of paper, and sitting at the table, her sun-bonnet making a grotesque shadow behind her, she began to write. She wrote with little hesitation, urged by the strength of some feeling. Her handwriting was large and she made long loops to her g's. "DEAR SIR,--Though you passed by my cottage yesterday you are so unknown to me by sight, that I have only just discovered who it was that was brought to such a pitiable condition before me. First, sir, let me describe to you what a sight I saw before me, when, hearing a great plunging and shouting in the road, I came out from the shippon to see what was the matter. "I saw, sir, a strong, well-looking, well-dressed young man of twenty-six lying in the mud of the road, his foot in one stirrup of his horse, he, mad with drink cursing, first the poor horse (a very quiet stallion), then the road (a very easy one) and last, the Almighty God of love. The horse, dragged everywhere by the efforts of the young man to gain a footing, was rewarded for its patience when its master at last, by my help, regained his feet, by severe kicks in the belly, and I, a poor woman, was abused and called evil names. "Sir! if instead of cursing the good-tempered beast or the God of love above you, you had cursed the origin of such a spectacle as you then were, your clothes covered with mud, your mouth full of blaspheming, staggering about the road pulling at the mouth of your horse--_strong drink_--you would have been a more reasonable being. "What, sir, had the horse done to you? What had this poor woman done to you? What, sir, had your heavenly Father done to you, that you should fill your mouth with curses against us all? Your enemy was none of us, but that viper, strong drink. "O sir! shun your enemy I beseech you. I am a woman who has had no children, but, sir, if I had been the mother of so strong and good-looking a man as you, it would have broken my heart to see you lying there muddy and cursing, a poorer sight under God's sky than the poor dumb beast that bore you.--Your obedient servant, Ann Hilton."