The HollyTree...................................................................................................................................................1

Charles Dickens.......................................................................................................................................1

FIRST BRANCHMYSELF .................................................................................................................1

SECOND BRANCHTHE BOOTS...................................................................................................11

THIRD BRANCHTHE BILL...........................................................................................................17

I have kept one secret in the course of my life. I am a bashful man. Nobody would suppose it, nobody ever

does suppose it, nobody ever did suppose it, but I am naturally a bashful man. This is the secret which I have

I might greatly move the reader by some account of the innumerable places I have not been to, the

innumerable people I have not called upon or received, the innumerable social evasions I have been guilty of,

solely because I am by original constitution and character a bashful man. But I will leave the reader

That object is to give a plain account of my travels and discoveries in the HollyTree Inn; in which place of

It happened in the memorable year when I parted for ever from Angela Leath, whom I was shortly to have

married, on making the discovery that she preferred my bosom friend. From our schooldays I had freely

admitted Edwin, in my own mind, to be far superior to myself; and, though I was grievously wounded at

heart, I felt the preference to be natural, and tried to forgive them both. It was under these circumstances that

Communicating my discovery neither to Angela nor to Edwin, but resolving to write each of them an

affecting letter conveying my blessing and forgiveness, which the steamtender for shore should carry to the

post when I myself should be bound for the New World, far beyond recall,I say, locking up my grief in my

own breast, and consoling myself as I could with the prospect of being generous, I quietly left all I held dear,

The dead wintertime was in full dreariness when I left my chambers for ever, at five o'clock in the morning.

I had shaved by candle light, of course, and was miserably cold, and experienced that general allpervading

sensation of getting up to be hanged which I have usually found inseparable from untimely rising under such

How well I remember the forlorn aspect of Fleet Street when I came out of the Temple! The streetlamps

flickering in the gusty north east wind, as if the very gas were contorted with cold; the white topped

houses; the bleak, starlighted sky; the market people and other early stragglers, trotting to circulate their

almost frozen blood; the hospitable light and warmth of the few coffeeshops and publichouses that were

open for such customers; the hard, dry, frosty rime with which the air was charged (the wind had already

It wanted nine days to the end of the month, and end of the year. The Postoffice packet for the United States

was to depart from Liverpool, weather permitting, on the first of the ensuing month, and I had the intervening

time on my hands. I had taken this into consideration, and had resolved to make a visit to a certain spot

(which I need not name) on the farther borders of Yorkshire. It was endeared to me by my having first seen

Angela at a farmhouse in that place, and my melancholy was gratified by the idea of taking a wintry leave of

it before my expatriation. I ought to explain, that, to avoid being sought out before my resolution should have

been rendered irrevocable by being carried into full effect, I had written to Angela overnight, in my usual

manner, lamenting that urgent business, of which she should know all particulars byandby took me

There was no Northern Railway at that time, and in its place there were stagecoaches; which I occasionally

find myself, in common with some other people, affecting to lament now, but which everybody dreaded as a

very serious penance then. I had secured the boxseat on the fastest of these, and my business in Fleet Street

was to get into a cab with my portmanteau, so to make the best of my way to the Peacock at Islington, where

I was to join this coach. But when one of our Temple watchmen, who carried my portmanteau into Fleet

Street for me, told me about the huge blocks of ice that had for some days past been floating in the river,

having closed up in the night, and made a walk from the Temple Gardens over to the Surrey shore, I began to

ask myself the question, whether the boxseat would not be likely to put a sudden and a frosty end to my

unhappiness. I was heartbroken, it is true, and yet I was not quite so far gone as to wish to be frozen to

When I got up to the Peacock,where I found everybody drinking hot purl, in selfpreservation,I asked if

there were an inside seat to spare. I then discovered that, inside or out, I was the only passenger. This gave

me a still livelier idea of the great inclemency of the weather, since that coach always loaded particularly

well. However, I took a little purl (which I found uncommonly good), and got into the coach. When I was

seated, they built me up with straw to the waist, and, conscious of making a rather ridiculous appearance, I

It was still dark when we left the Peacock. For a little while, pale, uncertain ghosts of houses and trees

appeared and vanished, and then it was hard, black, frozen day. People were lighting their fires; smoke was

mounting straight up high into the rarified air; and we were rattling for Highgate Archway over the hardest

ground I have ever heard the ring of iron shoes on. As we got into the country, everything seemed to have

grown old and gray. The roads, the trees, thatched roofs of cottages and homesteads, the ricks in farmers'

yards. Outdoor work was abandoned, horsetroughs at road side inns were frozen hard, no stragglers

lounged about, doors were close shut, little turnpike houses had blazing fires inside, and children (even

turnpike people have children, and seem to like them) rubbed the frost from the little panes of glass with their

chubby arms, that their bright eyes might catch a glimpse of the solitary coach going by. I don't know when

the snow begin to set in; but I know that we were changing horses somewhere when I heard the guard remark,

"That the old lady up in the sky was picking her geese pretty hard today." Then, indeed, I found the white

The lonely day wore on, and I dozed it out, as a lonely traveller does. I was warm and valiant after eating and

drinking, particularly after dinner; cold and depressed at all other times. I was always bewildered as to

time and place, and always more or less out of my senses. The coach and horses seemed to execute in chorus

Auld Lang Syne, without a moment's intermission. They kept the time and tune with the greatest regularity,

and rose into the swell at the beginning of the Refrain, with a precision that worried me to death. While we

changed horses, the guard and coachman went stumping up and down the road, printing off their shoes in the

snow, and poured so much liquid consolation into themselves without being any the worse for it, that I began

to confound them, as it darkened again, with two great white casks standing on end. Our horses tumbled

down in solitary places, and we got them up,which was the pleasantest variety I had, for it warmed me.

And it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing. All night long we went on in this

manner. Thus we came round the clock, upon the Great North Road, to the performance of Auld Lang Syne

by day again. And it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.

I forget now where we were at noon on the second day, and where we ought to have been; but I know that we

were scores of miles behindhand, and that our case was growing worse every hour. The drift was becoming

prodigiously deep; landmarks were getting snowed out; the road and the fields were all one; instead of having

fences and hedgerows to guide us, we went crunching on over an unbroken surface of ghastly white that

might sink beneath us at any moment and drop us down a whole hillside. Still the coachman and guard

who kept together on the box, always in council, and looking well about themmade out the track with

When we came in sight of a town, it looked, to my fancy, like a large drawing on a slate, with abundance of

slatepencil expended on the churches and houses where the snow lay thickest. When we came within a

town, and found the church clocks all stopped, the dial faces choked with snow, and the innsigns blotted

out, it seemed as if the whole place were overgrown with white moss. As to the coach, it was a mere

snowball; similarly, the men and boys who ran along beside us to the town's end, turning our clogged wheels

and encouraging our horses, were men and boys of snow; and the bleak wild solitude to which they at last

dismissed us was a snowy Sahara. One would have thought this enough: notwithstanding which, I pledge my

word that it snowed and snowed, and still it snowed, and never left off snowing.

We performed Auld Lang Syne the whole day; seeing nothing, out of towns and villages, but the track of

stoats, hares, and foxes, and sometimes of birds. At nine o'clock at night, on a Yorkshire moor, a cheerful

burst from our horn, and a welcome sound of talking, with a glimmering and moving about of lanterns,

They helped me out, and I said to a waiter, whose bare head became as white as King Lear's in a single

"Upon my word, I believe," said I, apologetically, to the guard and coachman, "that I must stop here."

Now the landlord, and the landlady, and the ostler, and the post boy, and all the stable authorities, had

already asked the coachman, to the wideeyed interest of all the rest of the establishment, if he meant to go

on. The coachman had already replied, "Yes, he'd take her through it,"meaning by Her the coach,"if so

be as George would stand by him." George was the guard, and he had already sworn that he would stand by

My declaring myself beaten, after this parley, was not an announcement without preparation. Indeed, but for

the way to the announcement being smoothed by the parley, I more than doubt whether, as an innately

bashful man, I should have had the confidence to make it. As it was, it received the approval even of the

guard and coachman. Therefore, with many confirmations of my inclining, and many remarks from one

bystander to another, that the gentleman could go for'ard by the mail tomorrow, whereas tonight he would

only be froze, and where was the good of a gentleman being frozeah, let alone buried alive (which latter

clause was added by a humorous helper as a joke at my expense, and was extremely well received), I saw my

portmanteau got out stiff, like a frozen body; did the handsome thing by the guard and coachman; wished

them good night and a prosperous journey; and, a little ashamed of myself, after all, for leaving them to

fight it out alone, followed the landlord, landlady, and waiter of the HollyTree upstairs.

I thought I had never seen such a large room as that into which they showed me. It had five windows, with

dark red curtains that would have absorbed the light of a general illumination; and there were complications

of drapery at the top of the curtains, that went wandering about the wall in a most extraordinary manner. I

They could screen me in, however, the landlord said. They brought a great old japanned screen, with natives

(Japanese, I suppose) engaged in a variety of idiotic pursuits all over it; and left me roasting whole before an

My bedroom was some quarter of a mile off, up a great staircase at the end of a long gallery; and nobody

knows what a misery this is to a bashful man who would rather not meet people on the stairs. It was the

grimmest room I have ever had the nightmare in; and all the furniture, from the four posts of the bed to the

two old silver candlesticks, was tall, highshouldered, and spindlewaisted. Below, in my sittingroom, if I

looked round my screen, the wind rushed at me like a mad bull; if I stuck to my armchair, the fire scorched

me to the colour of a new brick. The chimneypiece was very high, and there was a bad glasswhat I may

call a wavy glass above it, which, when I stood up, just showed me my anterior phrenological

developments,and these never look well, in any subject, cut short off at the eyebrow. If I stood with my

back to the fire, a gloomy vault of darkness above and beyond the screen insisted on being looked at; and, in

its dim remoteness, the drapery of the ten curtains of the five windows went twisting and creeping about, like

I suppose that what I observe in myself must be observed by some other men of similar character in

themselves; therefore I am emboldened to mention, that, when I travel, I never arrive at a place but I

immediately want to go away from it. Before I had finished my supper of broiled fowl and mulled port, I had

impressed upon the waiter in detail my arrangements for departure in the morning. Breakfast and bill at eight.

Tired though I was, the night appeared about a week long. In cases of nightmare, I thought of Angela, and felt

more depressed than ever by the reflection that I was on the shortest road to Gretna Green. What had I to do

with Gretna Green? I was not going that way to the Devil, but by the American route, I remarked in my

In the morning I found that it was snowing still, that it had snowed all night, and that I was snowed up.

Nothing could get out of that spot on the moor, or could come at it, until the road had been cut out by

labourers from the markettown. When they might cut their way to the HollyTree nobody could tell me.

It was now Christmaseve. I should have had a dismal Christmastime of it anywhere, and consequently that

did not so much matter; still, being snowed up was like dying of frost, a thing I had not bargained for. I felt

very lonely. Yet I could no more have proposed to the landlord and landlady to admit me to their society

(though I should have liked itvery much) than I could have asked them to present me with a piece of plate.

Here my great secret, the real bashfulness of my character, is to be observed. Like most bashful men, I judge

of other people as if they were bashful too. Besides being far too shamefaced to make the proposal myself, I

really had a delicate misgiving that it would be in the last degree disconcerting to them.

Trying to settle down, therefore, in my solitude, I first of all asked what books there were in the house. The

waiter brought me a Book of Roads, two or three old Newspapers, a little SongBook, terminating in a

collection of Toasts and Sentiments, a little Jest Book, an odd volume of Peregrine Pickle, and the

Sentimental Journey. I knew every word of the two last already, but I read them through again, then tried to

hum all the songs (Auld Lang Syne was among them); went entirely through the jokes,in which I found a

fund of melancholy adapted to my state of mind; proposed all the toasts, enunciated all the sentiments, and

mastered the papers. The latter had nothing in them but stock advertisements, a meeting about a county rate,

and a highway robbery. As I am a greedy reader, I could not make this supply hold out until night; it was

exhausted by teatime. Being then entirely cast upon my own resources, I got through an hour in considering

what to do next. Ultimately, it came into my head (from which I was anxious by any means to exclude

Angela and Edwin), that I would endeavour to recall my experience of Inns, and would try how long it lasted

me. I stirred the fire, moved my chair a little to one side of the screen,not daring to go far, for I knew the

My first impressions of an Inn dated from the Nursery; consequently I went back to the Nursery for a

startingpoint, and found myself at the knee of a sallow woman with a fishy eye, an aquiline nose, and a

green gown, whose specially was a dismal narrative of a landlord by the roadside, whose visitors

unaccountably disappeared for many years, until it was discovered that the pursuit of his life had been to

convert them into pies. For the better devotion of himself to this branch of industry, he had constructed a

secret door behind the head of the bed; and when the visitor (oppressed with pie) had fallen asleep, this

wicked landlord would look softly in with a lamp in one hand and a knife in the other, would cut his throat,

and would make him into pies; for which purpose he had coppers, underneath a trapdoor, always boiling;

and rolled out his pastry in the dead of the night. Yet even he was not insensible to the stings of conscience,

for he never went to sleep without being heard to mutter, "Too much pepper!" which was eventually the

cause of his being brought to justice. I had no sooner disposed of this criminal than there started up another of

the same period, whose profession was originally housebreaking; in the pursuit of which art he had had his

right ear chopped off one night, as he was burglariously getting in at a window, by a brave and lovely

servantmaid (whom the aquilinenosed woman, though not at all answering the description, always

mysteriously implied to be herself). After several years, this brave and lovely servantmaid was married to

the landlord of a country Inn; which landlord had this remarkable characteristic, that he always wore a silk

nightcap, and never would on any consideration take it off. At last, one night, when he was fast asleep, the

brave and lovely woman lifted up his silk nightcap on the right side, and found that he had no ear there; upon

which she sagaciously perceived that he was the clipped housebreaker, who had married her with the

intention of putting her to death. She immediately heated the poker and terminated his career, for which she

was taken to King George upon his throne, and received the compliments of royalty on her great discretion

and valour. This same narrator, who had a Ghoulish pleasure, I have long been persuaded, in terrifying me to

the utmost confines of my reason, had another authentic anecdote within her own experience, founded, I now

believe, upon Raymond and Agnes, or the Bleeding Nun. She said it happened to her brotherinlaw, who

was immensely rich,which my father was not; and immensely tall,which my father was not. It was

always a point with this Ghoul to present my clearest relations and friends to my youthful mind under

circumstances of disparaging contrast. The brotherinlaw was riding once through a forest on a magnificent

horse (we had no magnificent horse at our house), attended by a favourite and valuable Newfoundland dog

(we had no dog), when he found himself benighted, and came to an Inn. A dark woman opened the door, and

he asked her if he could have a bed there. She answered yes, and put his horse in the stable, and took him into

a room where there were two dark men. While he was at supper, a parrot in the room began to talk, saying,

"Blood, blood! Wipe up the blood!" Upon which one of the dark men wrung the parrot's neck, and said he

was fond of roasted parrots, and he meant to have this one for breakfast in the morning. After eating and

drinking heartily, the immensely rich, tall brotherinlaw went up to bed; but he was rather vexed, because

they had shut his dog in the stable, saying that they never allowed dogs in the house. He sat very quiet for

more than an hour, thinking and thinking, when, just as his candle was burning out, he heard a scratch at the

door. He opened the door, and there was the Newfoundland dog! The dog came softly in, smelt about him,

went straight to some straw in the corner which the dark men had said covered apples, tore the straw away,

and disclosed two sheets steeped in blood. Just at that moment the candle went out, and the brotherinlaw,

looking through a chink in the door, saw the two dark men stealing upstairs; one armed with a dagger that

long (about five feet); the other carrying a chopper, a sack, and a spade. Having no remembrance of the close

of this adventure, I suppose my faculties to have been always so frozen with terror at this stage of it, that the

These barbarous stories carried me, sitting there on the HollyTree hearth, to the Roadside Inn, renowned in

my time in a sixpenny book with a folding plate, representing in a central compartment of oval form the

portrait of Jonathan Bradford, and in four corner compartments four incidents of the tragedy with which the

name is associated,coloured with a hand at once so free and economical, that the bloom of Jonathan's

complexion passed without any pause into the breeches of the ostler, and, smearing itself off into the next

division, became rum in a bottle. Then I remembered how the landlord was found at the murdered traveller's

bedside, with his own knife at his feet, and blood upon his hand; how he was hanged for the murder,

notwithstanding his protestation that he had indeed come there to kill the traveller for his saddlebags, but

had been stricken motionless on finding him already slain; and how the ostler, years afterwards, owned the

deed. By this time I had made myself quite uncomfortable. I stirred the fire, and stood with my back to it as

long as I could bear the heat, looking up at the darkness beyond the screen, and at the wormy curtains

creeping in and creeping out, like the worms in the ballad of Alonzo the Brave and the Fair Imogene.

There was an Inn in the cathedral town where I went to school, which had pleasanter recollections about it

than any of these. I took it next. It was the Inn where friends used to put up, and where we used to go to see

parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be tipped. It had an ecclesiastical sign,the Mitre,and a bar

that seemed to be the next best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug. I loved the landlord's youngest daughter to

distraction,but let that pass. It was in this Inn that I was cried over by my rosy little sister, because I had

acquired a black eye in a fight. And though she had been, that HollyTree night, for many a long year where

"To be continued tomorrow," said I, when I took my candle to go to bed. But my bed took it upon itself to

continue the train of thought that night. It carried me away, like the enchanted carpet, to a distant place

(though still in England), and there, alighting from a stagecoach at another Inn in the snow, as I had actually

done some years before, I repeated in my sleep a curious experience I had really had there. More than a year

before I made the journey in the course of which I put up at that Inn, I had lost a very near and dear friend by

death. Every night since, at home or away from home, I had dreamed of that friend; sometimes as still living;

sometimes as returning from the world of shadows to comfort me; always as being beautiful, placid, and

happy, never in association with any approach to fear or distress. It was at a lonely Inn in a wide moorland

place, that I halted to pass the night. When I had looked from my bedroom window over the waste of snow on

which the moon was shining, I sat down by my fire to write a letter. I had always, until that hour, kept it

within my own breast that I dreamed every night of the dear lost one. But in the letter that I wrote I recorded

the circumstance, and added that I felt much interested in proving whether the subject of my dream would

still be faithful to me, traveltired, and in that remote place. No. I lost the beloved figure of my vision in

parting with the secret. My sleep has never looked upon it since, in sixteen years, but once. I was in Italy, and

awoke (or seemed to awake), the wellremembered voice distinctly in my ears, conversing with it. I entreated

it, as it rose above my bed and soared up to the vaulted roof of the old room, to answer me a question I had

asked touching the Future Life. My hands were still outstretched towards it as it vanished, when I heard a bell

ringing by the garden wall, and a voice in the deep stillness of the night calling on all good Christians to pray

To return to the HollyTree. When I awoke next day, it was freezing hard, and the lowering sky threatened

more snow. My breakfast cleared away, I drew my chair into its former place, and, with the fire getting so

much the better of the landscape that I sat in twilight, resumed my Inn remembrances.

That was a good Inn down in Wiltshire where I put up once, in the days of the hard Wiltshire ale, and before

all beer was bitterness. It was on the skirts of Salisbury Plain, and the midnight wind that rattled my lattice

window came moaning at me from Stonehenge. There was a hangeron at that establishment (a

supernaturally preserved Druid I believe him to have been, and to be still), with long white hair, and a flinty

blue eye always looking afar off; who claimed to have been a shepherd, and who seemed to be ever watching

for the reappearance, on the verge of the horizon, of some ghostly flock of sheep that had been mutton for

many ages. He was a man with a weird belief in him that no one could count the stones of Stonehenge twice,

and make the same number of them; likewise, that any one who counted them three times nine times, and

then stood in the centre and said, "I dare!" would behold a tremendous apparition, and be stricken dead. He

pretended to have seen a bustard (I suspect him to have been familiar with the dodo), in manner following:

He was out upon the plain at the close of a late autumn day, when he dimly discerned, going on before him at

a curious fitfully bounding pace, what he at first supposed to be a gigumbrella that had been blown from

some conveyance, but what he presently believed to be a lean dwarf man upon a little pony. Having followed

this object for some distance without gaining on it, and having called to it many times without receiving any

answer, he pursued it for miles and miles, when, at length coming up with it, he discovered it to be the last

bustard in Great Britain, degenerated into a wingless state, and running along the ground. Resolved to capture

him or perish in the attempt, he closed with the bustard; but the bustard, who had formed a

counterresolution that he should do neither, threw him, stunned him, and was last seen making off due west.

This weird main, at that stage of metempsychosis, may have been a sleepwalker or an enthusiast or a robber;

but I awoke one night to find him in the dark at my bedside, repeating the Athanasian Creed in a terrific

voice. I paid my bill next day, and retired from the county with all possible precipitation.

That was not a commonplace story which worked itself out at a little Inn in Switzerland, while I was staying

there. It was a very homely place, in a village of one narrow zigzag street, among mountains, and you went in

at the main door through the cowhouse, and among the mules and the dogs and the fowls, before ascending

a great bare staircase to the rooms; which were all of unpainted wood, without plastering or papering,like

rough packingcases. Outside there was nothing but the straggling street, a little toy church with a

coppercoloured steeple, a pine forest, a torrent, mists, and mountainsides. A young man belonging to this

Inn had disappeared eight weeks before (it was wintertime), and was supposed to have had some

undiscovered love affair, and to have gone for a soldier. He had got up in the night, and dropped into the

village street from the loft in which he slept with another man; and he had done it so quietly, that his

companion and fellowlabourer had heard no movement when he was awakened in the morning, and they

said, "Louis, where is Henri?" They looked for him high and low, in vain, and gave him up. Now, outside this

Inn, there stood, as there stood outside every dwelling in the village, a stack of firewood; but the stack

belonging to the Inn was higher than any of the rest, because the Inn was the richest house, and burnt the

most fuel. It began to be noticed, while they were looking high and low, that a Bantam cock, part of the live

stock of the Inn, put himself wonderfully out of his way to get to the top of this woodstack; and that he

would stay there for hours and hours, crowing, until he appeared in danger of splitting himself. Five weeks

went on,six weeks,and still this terrible Bantam, neglecting his domestic affairs, was always on the top

of the woodstack, crowing the very eyes out of his head. By this time it was perceived that Louis had

become inspired with a violent animosity towards the terrible Bantam, and one morning he was seen by a

woman, who sat nursing her goitre at a little window in a gleam of sun, to catch up a rough billet of wood,

with a great oath, hurl it at the terrible Bantam crowing on the woodstack, and bring him down dead.

Hereupon the woman, with a sudden light in her mind, stole round to the back of the woodstack, and, being

a good climber, as all those women are, climbed up, and soon was seen upon the summit, screaming, looking

down the hollow within, and crying, "Seize Louis, the murderer! Ring the church bell! Here is the body!" I

saw the murderer that day, and I saw him as I sat by my fire at the HollyTree Inn, and I see him now, lying

shackled with cords on the stable litter, among the mild eyes and the smoking breath of the cows, waiting to

be taken away by the police, and stared at by the fearful village. A heavy animal,the dullest animal in the

stables,with a stupid head, and a lumpish face devoid of any trace of insensibility, who had been, within

the knowledge of the murdered youth, an embezzler of certain small moneys belonging to his master, and

who had taken this hopeful mode of putting a possible accuser out of his way. All of which he confessed next

day, like a sulky wretch who couldn't be troubled any more, now that they had got hold of him, and meant to

make an end of him. I saw him once again, on the day of my departure from the Inn. In that Canton the

headsman still does his office with a sword; and I came upon this murderer sitting bound, to a chair, with his

eyes bandaged, on a scaffold in a little marketplace. In that instant, a great sword (loaded with quicksilver in

the thick part of the blade) swept round him like a gust of wind or fire, and there was no such creature in the

world. My wonder was, not that he was so suddenly dispatched, but that any head was left unreaped, within a

That was a good Inn, too, with the kind, cheerful landlady and the honest landlord, where I lived in the

shadow of Mont Blanc, and where one of the apartments has a zoological papering on the walls, not so

accurately joined but that the elephant occasionally rejoices in a tiger's hind legs and tail, while the lion puts

on a trunk and tusks, and the bear, moulting as it were, appears as to portions of himself like a leopard. I

made several American friends at that Inn, who all called Mont Blanc Mount Blank,except one good

humoured gentleman, of a very sociable nature, who became on such intimate terms with it that he spoke of it

familiarly as "Blank;" observing, at breakfast, "Blank looks pretty tall this morning;" or considerably

doubting in the courtyard in the evening, whether there warn't some goahead naters in our country, sir, that

Once I passed a fortnight at an Inn in the North of England, where I was haunted by the ghost of a

tremendous pie. It was a Yorkshire pie, like a fort,an abandoned fort with nothing in it; but the waiter had

a fixed idea that it was a point of ceremony at every meal to put the pie on the table. After some days I tried

to hint, in several delicate ways, that I considered the pie done with; as, for example, by emptying fagends

of glasses of wine into it; putting cheeseplates and spoons into it, as into a basket; putting winebottles into

it, as into a cooler; but always in vain, the pie being invariably cleaned out again and brought up as before. At

last, beginning to be doubtful whether I was not the victim of a spectral illusion, and whether my health and

spirits might not sink under the horrors of an imaginary pie, I cut a triangle out of it, fully as large as the

musical instrument of that name in a powerful orchestra. Human provision could not have foreseen the

resultbut the waiter mended the pie. With some effectual species of cement, he adroitly fitted the triangle

The HollyTree was getting rather dismal. I made an overland expedition beyond the screen, and penetrated

as far as the fourth window. Here I was driven back by stress of weather. Arrived at my winterquarters once

It was in the remotest part of Cornwall. A great annual Miners' Feast was being holden at the Inn, when I and

my travelling companions presented ourselves at night among the wild crowd that were dancing before it by

torchlight. We had had a breakdown in the dark, on a stony morass some miles away; and I had the honour

of leading one of the unharnessed posthorses. If any lady or gentleman, on perusal of the present lines, will

take any very tall posthorse with his traces hanging about his legs, and will conduct him by the bearingrein

into the heart of a country dance of a hundred and fifty couples, that lady or gentleman will then, and only

then, form an adequate idea of the extent to which that post horse will tread on his conductor's toes. Over

and above which, the posthorse, finding three hundred people whirling about him, will probably rear, and

also lash out with his hind legs, in a manner incompatible with dignity or selfrespect on his conductor's part.

With such little drawbacks on my usually impressive aspect, I appeared at this Cornish Inn, to the unutterable

wonder of the Cornish Miners. It was full, and twenty times full, and nobody could be received but the

posthorse,though to get rid of that noble animal was something. While my fellowtravellers and I were

discussing how to pass the night and so much of the next day as must intervene before the jovial blacksmith

and the jovial wheelwright would be in a condition to go out on the morass and mend the coach, an honest

man stepped forth from the crowd and proposed his unlet floor of two rooms, with supper of eggs and bacon,

ale and punch. We joyfully accompanied him home to the strangest of clean houses, where we were well

entertained to the satisfaction of all parties. But the novel feature of the entertainment was, that our host was a

chairmaker, and that the chairs assigned to us were mere frames, altogether without bottoms of any sort; so

that we passed the evening on perches. Nor was this the absurdest consequence; for when we unbent at

supper, and any one of us gave way to laughter, he forgot the peculiarity of his position, and instantly

disappeared. I myself, doubled up into an attitude from which selfextrication was impossible, was taken out

of my frame, like a clown in a comic pantomime who has tumbled into a tub, five times by the taper's light

The HollyTree was fast reviving within me a sense of loneliness. I began to feel conscious that my subject

There was a story with a singular idea in it, connected with an Inn I once passed a night at in a picturesque

old town on the Welsh border. In a large doublebedded room of this Inn there had been a suicide committed

by poison, in one bed, while a tired traveller slept unconscious in the other. After that time, the suicide bed

was never used, but the other constantly was; the disused bedstead remaining in the room empty, though as to

all other respects in its old state. The story ran, that whosoever slept in this room, though never so entire a

stranger, from never so far off, was invariably observed to come down in the morning with an impression that

he smelt Laudanum, and that his mind always turned upon the subject of suicide; to which, whatever kind of

man he might be, he was certain to make some reference if he conversed with any one. This went on for

years, until it at length induced the landlord to take the disused bedstead down, and bodily burn it,bed,

hangings, and all. The strange influence (this was the story) now changed to a fainter one, but never changed

afterwards. The occupant of that room, with occasional but very rare exceptions, would come down in the

morning, trying to recall a forgotten dream he had had in the night. The landlord, on his mentioning his

perplexity, would suggest various commonplace subjects, not one of which, as he very well knew, was the

true subject. But the moment the landlord suggested "Poison," the traveller started, and cried, "Yes!" He

never failed to accept that suggestion, and he never recalled any more of the dream.

This reminiscence brought the Welsh Inns in general before me; with the women in their round hats, and the

harpers with their white beards (venerable, but humbugs, I am afraid), playing outside the door while I took

my dinner. The transition was natural to the Highland Inns, with the oatmeal bannocks, the honey, the

venison steaks, the trout from the loch, the whisky, and perhaps (having the materials so temptingly at hand)

the Athol brose. Once was I coming south from the Scottish Highlands in hot haste, hoping to change quickly

at the station at the bottom of a certain wild historical glen, when these eyes did with mortification see the

landlord come out with a telescope and sweep the whole prospect for the horses; which horses were away

picking up their own living, and did not heave in sight under four hours. Having thought of the lochtrout, I

was taken by quick association to the Anglers' Inns of England (I have assisted at innumerable feats of

angling by lying in the bottom of the boat, whole summer days, doing nothing with the greatest perseverance;

which I have generally found to be as effectual towards the taking of fish as the finest tackle and the utmost

science), and to the pleasant white, clean, flowerpotdecorated bedrooms of those inns, overlooking the

river, and the ferry, and the green ait, and the churchspire, and the country bridge; and to the pearless Emma

with the bright eyes and the pretty smile, who waited, bless her! with a natural grace that would have

converted BlueBeard. Casting my eyes upon my HollyTree fire, I next discerned among the glowing coals

the pictures of a score or more of those wonderful English postinginns which we are all so sorry to have

lost, which were so large and so comfortable, and which were such monuments of British submission to

rapacity and extortion. He who would see these houses pining away, let him walk from Basingstoke, or even

Windsor, to London, by way of Hounslow, and moralise on their perishing remains; the stables crumbling to

dust; unsettled labourers and wanderers bivouacking in the outhouses; grass growing in the yards; the rooms,

where erst so many hundred beds of down were made up, let off to Irish lodgers at eighteenpence a week; a

little illlooking beershop shrinking in the tap of former days, burning coachhouse gates for firewood,

having one of its two windows bunged up, as if it had received punishment in a fight with the Railroad; a

low, bandylegged, brickmaking bulldog standing in the doorway. What could I next see in my fire so

naturally as the new railwayhouse of these times near the dismal country station; with nothing particular on

draught but cold air and damp, nothing worth mentioning in the larder but new mortar, and no business doing

beyond a conceited affectation of luggage in the hall? Then I came to the Inns of Paris, with the pretty

apartment of four pieces up one hundred and seventyfive waxed stairs, the privilege of ringing the bell all

day long without influencing anybody's mind or body but your own, and the nottoomuchfor dinner,

considering the price. Next to the provincial Inns of France, with the great churchtower rising above the

courtyard, the horsebells jingling merrily up and down the street beyond, and the clocks of all descriptions

in all the rooms, which are never right, unless taken at the precise minute when, by getting exactly twelve

hours too fast or too slow, they unintentionally become so. Away I went, next, to the lesser roadside Inns of

Italy; where all the dirty clothes in the house (not in wear) are always lying in your anteroom; where the

mosquitoes make a raisin pudding of your face in summer, and the cold bites it blue in winter; where you get

what you can, and forget what you can't: where I should again like to be boiling my tea in a

pockethandkerchief dumpling, for want of a teapot. So to the old palace Inns and old monastery Inns, in

towns and cities of the same bright country; with their massive quadrangular staircases, whence you may look

from among clustering pillars high into the blue vault of heaven; with their stately banquetingrooms, and

vast refectories; with their labyrinths of ghostly bedchambers, and their glimpses into gorgeous streets that

have no appearance of reality or possibility. So to the close little Inns of the Malaria districts, with their pale

attendants, and their peculiar smell of never letting in the air. So to the immense fantastic Inns of Venice,

with the cry of the gondolier below, as he skims the corner; the grip of the watery odours on one particular

little bit of the bridge of your nose (which is never released while you stay there); and the great bell of St.

Mark's Cathedral tolling midnight. Next I put up for a minute at the restless Inns upon the Rhine, where your

going to bed, no matter at what hour, appears to be the tocsin for everybody else's getting up; and where, in

the tabled'hote room at the end of the long table (with several Towers of Babel on it at the other end, all

made of white plates), one knot of stoutish men, entirely dressed in jewels and dirt, and having nothing else

upon them, will remain all night, clinking glasses, and singing about the river that flows, and the grape that

grows, and Rhine wine that beguiles, and Rhine woman that smiles and hi drink drink my friend and ho drink

drink my brother, and all the rest of it. I departed thence, as a matter of course, to other German Inns, where

all the eatables are soddened down to the same flavour, and where the mind is disturbed by the apparition of

hot puddings, and boiled cherries, sweet and slab, at awfully unexpected periods of the repast. After a draught

of sparkling beer from a foaming glass jug, and a glance of recognition through the windows of the student

beerhouses at Heidelberg and elsewhere, I put out to sea for the Inns of America, with their four hundred

beds apiece, and their eight or nine hundred ladies and gentlemen at dinner every day. Again I stood in the

barrooms thereof, taking my evening cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail. Again I listened to my friend the

General,whom I had known for five minutes, in the course of which period he had made me intimate for

life with two Majors, who again had made me intimate for life with three Colonels, who again had made me

brother to twentytwo civilians,again, I say, I listened to my friend the General, leisurely expounding the

resources of the establishment, as to gentlemen's morningroom, sir; ladies' morningroom, sir; gentlemen's

eveningroom, sir; ladies' eveningroom, sir; ladies' and gentlemen's evening reunitingroom, sir;

musicroom, sir; readingroom, sir; over four hundred sleeping rooms, sir; and the entire planned and

finited within twelve calendar months from the first clearing off of the old encumbrances on the plot, at a cost

of five hundred thousand dollars, sir. Again I found, as to my individual way of thinking, that the greater, the

more gorgeous, and the more dollarous the establishment was, the less desirable it was. Nevertheless, again I

drank my cobbler, julep, sling, or cocktail, in all goodwill, to my friend the General, and my friends the

Majors, Colonels, and civilians all; full well knowing that, whatever little motes my beamy eyes may have

descried in theirs, they belong to a kind, generous, largehearted, and great people.

I had been going on lately at a quick pace to keep my solitude out of my mind; but here I broke down for

good, and gave up the subject. What was I to do? What was to become of me? Into what extremity was I

submissively to sink? Supposing that, like Baron Trenck, I looked out for a mouse or spider, and found one,

and beguiled my imprisonment by training it? Even that might be dangerous with a view to the future. I might

be so far gone when the road did come to be cut through the snow, that, on my way forth, I might burst into

tears, and beseech, like the prisoner who was released in his old age from the Bastille, to be taken back again

A desperate idea came into my head. Under any other circumstances I should have rejected it; but, in the

strait at which I was, I held it fast. Could I so far overcome the inherent bashfulness which withheld me from

the landlord's table and the company I might find there, as to call up the Boots, and ask him to take a

Where had he been in his time? he repeated, when I asked him the question. Lord, he had been everywhere!

And what had he been? Bless you, he had been everything you could mention a'most!

Seen a good deal? Why, of course he had. I should say so, he could assure me, if I only knew about a

twentieth part of what had come in his way. Why, it would be easier for him, he expected, to tell what he

What was the curiousest thing he had seen? Well! He didn't know. He couldn't momently name what was the

curiousest thing he had seen unless it was a Unicorn, and he see him once at a Fair. But supposing a young

gentleman not eight year old was to run away with a fine young woman of seven, might I think that a queer

start? Certainly. Then that was a start as he himself had had his blessed eyes on, and he had cleaned the shoes

Master Harry Walmers' father, you see, he lived at the Elmses, down away by Shooter's Hill there, six or

seven miles from Lunnon. He was a gentleman of spirit, and goodlooking, and held his head up when he

walked, and had what you may call Fire about him. He wrote poetry, and he rode, and he ran, and he

cricketed, and he danced, and he acted, and he done it all equally beautiful. He was uncommon proud of

Master Harry as was his only child; but he didn't spoil him neither. He was a gentleman that had a will of his

own and a eye of his own, and that would be minded. Consequently, though he made quite a companion of

the fine bright boy, and was delighted to see him so fond of reading his fairy books, and was never tired of

hearing him say my name is Norval, or hearing him sing his songs about Young May Moons is beaming love,

and When he as adores thee has left but the name, and that; still he kept the command over the child, and the

How did Boots happen to know all this? Why, through being under gardener. Of course he couldn't be

undergardener, and be always about, in the summertime, near the windows on the lawn, a mowing, and

sweeping, and weeding, and pruning, and this and that, without getting acquainted with the ways of the

family. Even supposing Master Harry hadn't come to him one morning early, and said, "Cobbs, how should

you spell Norah, if you was asked?" and then began cutting it in print all over the fence.

He couldn't say he had taken particular notice of children before that; but really it was pretty to see them two

mites a going about the place together, deep in love. And the courage of the boy! Bless your soul, he'd have

throwed off his little hat, and tucked up his little sleeves, and gone in at a Lion, he would, if they had

happened to meet one, and she had been frightened of him. One day he stops, along with her, where Boots

was hoeing weeds in the gravel, and says, speaking up, "Cobbs," he says, "I like you." "Do you, sir? I'm

proud to hear it." "Yes, I do, Cobbs. Why do I like you, do you think, Cobbs?" "Don't know, Master Harry, I

am sure." "Because Norah likes you, Cobbs." "Indeed, sir? That's very gratifying." "Gratifying, Cobbs? It's

better than millions of the brightest diamonds to be liked by Norah." "Certainly, sir." "You're going away,

ain't you, Cobbs?" "Yes, sir." "Would you like another situation, Cobbs?" "Well, sir, I shouldn't object, if it

was a good Inn." "Then, Cobbs," says he, "you shall be our Head Gardener when we are married." And he

Boots could assure me that it was better than a picter, and equal to a play, to see them babies, with their long,

bright, curling hair, their sparkling eyes, and their beautiful light tread, a rambling about the garden, deep in

love. Boots was of opinion that the birds believed they was birds, and kept up with 'em, singing to please 'em.

Sometimes they would creep under the Tuliptree, and would sit there with their arms round one another's

necks, and their soft cheeks touching, a reading about the Prince and the Dragon, and the good and bad

enchanters, and the king's fair daughter. Sometimes he would hear them planning about having a house in a

forest, keeping bees and a cow, and living entirely on milk and honey. Once he came upon them by the pond,

and heard Master Harry say, "Adorable Norah, kiss me, and say you love me to distraction, or I'll jump in

head foremost." And Boots made no question he would have done it if she hadn't complied. On the whole,

Boots said it had a tendency to make him feel as if he was in love himselfonly he didn't exactly know who

"Cobbs," said Master Harry, one evening, when Cobbs was watering the flowers, "I am going on a visit, this

"Are you indeed, sir? I hope you'll have a pleasant time. I am going into Yorkshire, myself, when I leave

The boy looked on at the watering of the flowers for a little while, and then said, "I shall be very glad indeed

"You'll be all right then, sir," says Cobbs, "with your beautiful sweetheart by your side."

"Cobbs," returned the boy, flushing, "I never let anybody joke about it, when I can prevent them."

"I am glad of that, Cobbs, because I like you, you know, and you're going to live with us.Cobbs!"

"A person could do a good deal with such a sum of money as that, couldn't a person, Cobbs?"

"Cobbs," said the boy, "I'll tell you a secret. At Norah's house, they have been joking her about me, and

The boy, looking exactly like his father, stood for a few minutes with his glowing face towards the sunset,

If I was to ask Boots how it happened that he was agoing to leave that place just at that present time, well,

he couldn't rightly answer me. He did suppose he might have stayed there till now if he had been anyways

inclined. But, you see, he was younger then, and he wanted change. That's what he wanted,change. Mr.

Walmers, he said to him when he gave him notice of his intentions to leave, "Cobbs," he says, "have you

anythink to complain of? I make the inquiry because if I find that any of my people really has anythink to

complain of, I wish to make it right if I can." "No, sir." says Cobbs; "thanking you, sir, I find myself as well

sitiwated here as I could hope to be anywheres. The truth is, sir, that I'm agoing to seek my fortun'." "O,

indeed, Cobbs!" he says; "I hope you may find it." And Boots could assure mewhich he did, touching his

hair with his bootjack, as a salute in the way of his present calling that he hadn't found it yet.

Well, sir! Boots left the Elmses when his time was up, and Master Harry, he went down to the old lady's at

York, which old lady would have given that child the teeth out of her head (if she had had any), she was so

wrapped up in him. What does that Infant do,for Infant you may call him and be within the mark,but cut

away from that old lady's with his Norah, on a expedition to go to Gretna Green and be married!

Sir, Boots was at this identical HollyTree Inn (having left it several times since to better himself, but always

come back through one thing or another), when, one summer afternoon, the coach drives up, and out of the

coach gets them two children. The Guard says to our Governor, "I don't quite make out these little

passengers, but the young gentleman's words was, that they was to be brought here." The young gentleman

gets out; hands his lady out; gives the Guard something for himself; says to our Governor, "We're to stop here

to night, please. Sittingroom and two bedrooms will be required. Chops and cherrypudding for two!" and

tucks her, in her skyblue mantle, under his arm, and walks into the house much bolder than Brass.

Boots leaves me to judge what the amazement of that establishment was, when these two tiny creatures all

alone by themselves was marched into the Angel,much more so, when he, who had seen them without

their seeing him, give the Governor his views of the expedition they was upon. "Cobbs," says the Governor,

"if this is so, I must set off myself to York, and quiet their friends' minds. In which case you must keep your

eye upon 'em, and humour 'em, till I come back. But before I take these measures, Cobbs, I should wish you

to find from themselves whether your opinion is correct." "Sir, to you," says Cobbs, "that shall be done

So Boots goes upstairs to the Angel, and there he finds Master Harry on a enormous sofa,immense at

any time, but looking like the Great Bed of Ware, compared with him,a drying the eyes of Miss Norah

with his pockethankecher. Their little legs was entirely off the ground, of course, and it really is not possible

"It's Cobbs! It's Cobbs!" cries Master Harry, and comes running to him, and catching hold of his hand. Miss

Norah comes running to him on t'other side and catching hold of his t'other hand, and they both jump for joy.

"I see you a getting out, sir," says Cobbs. "I thought it was you. I thought I couldn't be mistaken in your

"We are going to be married, Cobbs, at Gretna Green," returned the boy. "We have run away on purpose.

Norah has been in rather low spirits, Cobbs; but she'll be happy, now we have found you to be our friend."

"Thank you, sir, and thank you, miss," says Cobbs, "for your good opinion. Did you bring any luggage with

If I will believe Boots when he gives me his word and honour upon it, the lady had got a parasol, a

smellingbottle, a round and a half of cold buttered toast, eight peppermint drops, and a hair

brush,seemingly a doll's. The gentleman had got about half a dozen yards of string, a knife, three or four

sheets of writing paper folded up surprising small, a orange, and a Chaney mug with his name upon it.

"To go on," replied the boy,which the courage of that boy was something wonderful!"in the morning,

"Just so, sir," says Cobbs. "Would it meet your views, sir, if I was to accompany you?"

When Cobbs said this, they both jumped for joy again, and cried out, "Oh, yes, yes, Cobbs! Yes!"

"Well, sir," says Cobbs. "If you will excuse my having the freedom to give an opinion, what I should

recommend would be this. I'm acquainted with a pony, sir, which, put in a pheayton that I could borrow,

would take you and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, (myself driving, if you approved,) to the end of your

journey in a very short space of time. I am not altogether sure, sir, that this pony will be at liberty tomorrow,

but even if you had to wait over to morrow for him, it might be worth your while. As to the small account

here, sir, in case you was to find yourself running at all short, that don't signify; because I'm a part proprietor

Boots assures me that when they clapped their hands, and jumped for joy again, and called him "Good

Cobbs!" and "Dear Cobbs!" and bent across him to kiss one another in the delight of their confiding hearts, he

"Is there anything you want just at present, sir?" says Cobbs, mortally ashamed of himself.

"We should like some cakes after dinner," answered Master Harry, folding his arms, putting out one leg, and

looking straight at him, "and two apples,and jam. With dinner we should like to have toastandwater. But

Norah has always been accustomed to half a glass of currant wine at dessert. And so have I."

Boots has the feeling as fresh upon him at this minute of speaking as he had then, that he would far rather

have had it out in halfa dozen rounds with the Governor than have combined with him; and that he wished

with all his heart there was any impossible place where those two babies could make an impossible marriage,

and live impossibly happy ever afterwards. However, as it couldn't be, he went into the Governor's plans, and

The way in which the women of that housewithout exceptionevery one of 'emmarried and

singletook to that boy when they heard the story, Boots considers surprising. It was as much as he could do

to keep 'em from dashing into the room and kissing him. They climbed up all sorts of places, at the risk of

their lives, to look at him through a pane of glass. They was seven deep at the keyhole. They was out of their

In the evening, Boots went into the room to see how the runaway couple was getting on. The gentleman was

on the windowseat, supporting the lady in his arms. She had tears upon her face, and was lying, very tired

"Yes, she is tired, Cobbs; but she is not used to be away from home, and she has been in low spirits again.

Boots withdrew in search of the required restorative, and when he brought it in, the gentleman handed it to

the lady, and fed her with a spoon, and took a little himself; the lady being heavy with sleep, and rather cross.

"What should you think, sir," says Cobbs, "of a chamber candlestick?" The gentleman approved; the

chambermaid went first, up the great staircase; the lady, in her skyblue mantle, followed, gallantly escorted

by the gentleman; the gentleman embraced her at her door, and retired to his own apartment, where Boots

Boots couldn't but feel with increased acuteness what a base deceiver he was, when they consulted him at

breakfast (they had ordered sweet milkandwater, and toast and currant jelly, over night) about the pony.

It really was as much as he could do, he don't mind confessing to me, to look them two young things in the

face, and think what a wicked old father of lies he had grown up to be. Howsomever, he went on a lying like

a Trojan about the pony. He told 'em that it did so unfortunately happen that the pony was half clipped, you

see, and that he couldn't be taken out in that state, for fear it should strike to his inside. But that he'd be

finished clipping in the course of the day, and that tomorrow morning at eight o'clock the pheayton would

be ready. Boots's view of the whole case, looking back on it in my room, is, that Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior,

was beginning to give in. She hadn't had her hair curled when she went to bed, and she didn't seem quite up to

brushing it herself, and its getting in her eyes put her out. But nothing put out Master Harry. He sat behind his

After breakfast, Boots is inclined to consider that they drawed soldiers,at least, he knows that many such

was found in the fire place, all on horseback. In the course of the morning, Master Harry rang the bell,it

was surprising how that there boy did carry on, and said, in a sprightly way, "Cobbs, is there any good

"Get out with you, Cobbs!"that was that there boy's expression, "you're joking."

"Begging your pardon, sir," says Cobbs, "there really is Love Lane. And a pleasant walk it is, and proud shall

"Norah, dear," said Master Harry, "this is curious. We really ought to see Love Lane. Put on your bonnet, my

Boots leaves me to judge what a Beast he felt himself to be, when that young pair told him, as they all three

jogged along together, that they had made up their minds to give him two thousand guineas a year as

headgardener, on accounts of his being so true a friend to 'em. Boots could have wished at the moment that

the earth would have opened and swallowed him up, he felt so mean, with their beaming eyes a looking at

him, and believing him. Well, sir, he turned the conversation as well as he could, and he took 'em down Love

Lane to the watermeadows, and there Master Harry would have drowned himself in half a moment more, a

getting out a waterlily for her,but nothing daunted that boy. Well, sir, they was tired out. All being so

new and strange to 'em, they was tired as tired could be. And they laid down on a bank of daisies, like the

Boots don't knowperhaps I do,but never mind, it don't signify either waywhy it made a man fit to

make a fool of himself to see them two pretty babies a lying there in the clear still sunny day, not dreaming

half so hard when they was asleep as they done when they was awake. But, Lord! when you come to think of

yourself, you know, and what a game you have been up to ever since you was in your own cradle, and what a

poor sort of a chap you are, and how it's always either Yesterday with you, or else Tomorrow, and never

Well, sir, they woke up at last, and then one thing was getting pretty clear to Boots, namely, that Mrs. Harry

Walmerses, Junior's, temper was on the move. When Master Harry took her round the waist, she said he

"teased her so;" and when he says, "Norah, my young May Moon, your Harry tease you?" she tells him, "Yes;

A biled fowl, and baked breadandbutter pudding, brought Mrs. Walmers up a little; but Boots could have

wished, he must privately own to me, to have seen her more sensible of the woice of love, and less

abandoning of herself to currants. However, Master Harry, he kept up, and his noble heart was as fond as

ever. Mrs. Walmers turned very sleepy about dusk, and began to cry. Therefore, Mrs. Walmers went off to

About eleven or twelve at night comes back the Governor in a chaise, along with Mr. Walmers and a elderly

lady. Mr. Walmers looks amused and very serious, both at once, and says to our missis, "We are much

indebted to you, ma'am, for your kind care of our little children, which we can never sufficiently

acknowledge. Pray, ma'am, where is my boy?" Our missis says, "Cobbs has the dear child in charge, sir.

Cobbs, show Forty!" Then he says to Cobbs, "Ah, Cobbs, I am glad to see you! I understood you was here!"

I may be surprised to hear Boots say it, perhaps; but Boots assures me that his heart beat like a hammer,

going upstairs. "I beg your pardon, sir," says he, while unlocking the door; "I hope you are not angry with

Master Harry. For Master Harry is a fine boy, sir, and will do you credit and honour." And Boots signifies to

me, that, if the fine boy's father had contradicted him in the daring state of mind in which he then was, he

But Mr. Walmers only says, "No, Cobbs. No, my good fellow. Thank you!" And, the door being opened,

Boots goes in too, holding the light, and he sees Mr. Walmers go up to the bedside, bend gently down, and

kiss the little sleeping face. Then he stands looking at it for a minute, looking wonderfully like it (they do say

Master Harry starts up and looks at him. Looks at Cobbs too. Such is the honour of that mite, that he looks at

Master Harry dresses himself quickly. His breast begins to swell when he has nearly finished, and it swells

more and more as he stands, at last, a looking at his father: his father standing a looking at him, the quiet

"Please may I"the spirit of that little creatur, and the way he kept his rising tears down!"please, dear

So he takes Master Harry in his hand, and Boots leads the way with the candle, and they come to that other

bedroom, where the elderly lady is seated by the bed, and poor little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, is fast

asleep. There the father lifts the child up to the pillow, and he lays his little face down for an instant by the

little warm face of poor unconscious little Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, and gently draws it to him,a sight

so touching to the chambermaids who are peeping through the door, that one of them calls out, "It's a shame

to part 'em!" But this chambermaid was always, as Boots informs me, a softhearted one. Not that there was

Finally, Boots says, that's all about it. Mr. Walmers drove away in the chaise, having hold of Master Harry's

hand. The elderly lady and Mrs. Harry Walmers, Junior, that was never to be (she married a Captain long

afterwards, and died in India), went off next day. In conclusion, Boots put it to me whether I hold with him in

two opinions: firstly, that there are not many couples on their way to be married who are half as innocent of

guile as those two children; secondly, that it would be a jolly good thing for a great many couples on their

way to be married, if they could only be stopped in time, and brought back separately.

I had been snowed up a whole week. The time had hung so lightly on my hands, that I should have been in

great doubt of the fact but for a piece of documentary evidence that lay upon my table.

The road had been dug out of the snow on the previous day, and the document in question was my bill. It

testified emphatically to my having eaten and drunk, and warmed myself, and slept among the sheltering

I had yesterday allowed the road twentyfour hours to improve itself, finding that I required that additional

margin of time for the completion of my task. I had ordered my Bill to be upon the table, and a chaise to be at

the door, "at eight o'clock tomorrow evening." It was eight o'clock tomorrow evening when I buckled up

my travelling writingdesk in its leather case, paid my Bill, and got on my warm coats and wrappers. Of

course, no time now remained for my travelling on to add a frozen tear to the icicles which were doubtless

hanging plentifully about the farmhouse where I had first seen Angela. What I had to do was to get across to

Liverpool by the shortest open road, there to meet my heavy baggage and embark. It was quite enough to do,

I had taken leave of all my HollyTree friendsalmost, for the time being, of my bashfulness tooand was

standing for half a minute at the Inn door watching the ostler as he took another turn at the cord which tied

my portmanteau on the chaise, when I saw lamps coming down towards the HollyTree. The road was so

padded with snow that no wheels were audible; but all of us who were standing at the Inn door saw lamps

coming on, and at a lively rate too, between the walls of snow that had been heaped up on either side of the

track. The chambermaid instantly divined how the case stood, and called to the ostler, "Tom, this is a Gretna

job!" The ostler, knowing that her sex instinctively scented a marriage, or anything in that direction, rushed

up the yard bawling, "Next four out!" and in a moment the whole establishment was thrown into commotion.

I had a melancholy interest in seeing the happy man who loved and was beloved; and therefore, instead of

driving off at once, I remained at the Inn door when the fugitives drove up. A brighteyed fellow, muffled in

a mantle, jumped out so briskly that he almost overthrew me. He turned to apologise, and, by heaven, it was

"Edwin," said I, recoiling, "gracious powers, what do you do here?" I struck my forehead as I said it, and an

He hurried me into the little parlour (always kept with a slow fire in it and no poker), where posting company

"Edwin!" I returned. "Was this well? When I loved her so dearly! When I had garnered up my heart so long!"

He was shocked when he saw how moved I was, and made the cruel observation, that he had not thought I

I looked at him. I reproached him no more. But I looked at him. "My dear, dear Charley," said he, "don't

think ill of me, I beseech you! I know you have a right to my utmost confidence, and, believe me, you have

ever had it until now. I abhor secrecy. Its meanness is intolerable to me. But I and my dear girl have observed

"You have observed it for my sake, sir?" said I, wondering how his frank face could face it out so.

I found the room reeling round in an uncertain way, like a labouring, hummingtop. "Explain yourself," said

"Dear old darling Charley!" returned Edwin, in his cordial manner, "consider! When you were going on so

happily with Angela, why should I compromise you with the old gentleman by making you a party to our

engagement, and (after he had declined my proposals) to our secret intention? Surely it was better that you

should be able honourably to say, 'He never took counsel with me, never told me, never breathed a word of

it.' If Angela suspected it, and showed me all the favour and support she couldGod bless her for a precious

creature and a priceless wife!I couldn't help that. Neither I nor Emmeline ever told her, any more than we

told you. And for the same good reason, Charley; trust me, for the same good reason, and no other upon

Emmeline was Angela's cousin. Lived with her. Had been brought up with her. Was her father's ward. Had

"Emmeline is in the chaise, my dear Edwin!" said I, embracing him with the greatest affection.

"My good fellow!" said he, "do you suppose I should be going to Gretna Green without her?"

I ran out with Edwin, I opened the chaise door, I took Emmeline in my arms, I folded her to my heart. She

was wrapped in soft white fur, like the snowy landscape: but was warm, and young, and lovely. I put their

leaders to with my own hands, I gave the boys a five pound note apiece, I cheered them as they drove away,

I never went to Liverpool, I never went to America, I went straight back to London, and I married Angela. I

have never until this time, even to her, disclosed the secret of my character, and the mistrust and the mistaken

journey into which it led me. When she, and they, and our eight children and their sevenI mean Edwin and

Emmeline's, whose oldest girl is old enough now to wear white for herself, and to look very like her mother

in itcome to read these pages, as of course they will, I shall hardly fail to be found out at last. Never mind!

I can bear it. I began at the HollyTree, by idle accident, to associate the Christmas time of year with human

interest, and with some inquiry into, and some care for, the lives of those by whom I find myself surrounded.

I hope that I am none the worse for it, and that no one near me or afar off is the worse for it. And I say, May

the green HollyTree flourish, striking its roots deep into our English ground, and having its germinating