"

The associates being satisfied, by these abrupt insinuations, that they
had so far succeeded in their aim, waited with impatience two or three
days in expectation of hearing that Tunley had fallen upon some method
of being revenged for this imaginary wrong; but finding that either his
invention was too shallow, or his inclination too languid, to gratify
their desire of his own accord, they determined to bring the affair to
such a crisis, that he should not be able to withstand the opportunity
of executing his vengeance. With this view, they one evening hired a boy
to run to Mr. Pickle's house, and tell the curate that Mrs. Tunley being
taken suddenly ill, her husband desired he would come immediately and
pray with her. They had taken possession of a room in the house and
Hatchway engaging the landlord in conversation, Peregrine, in his return
from the yard, observed, as if by accident, that the parson was gone
into the kitchen, in order, as he supposed, to catechise Tunley's wife.

The publican started at this intelligence, and, under pretence of
serving another company in the next room, went out to the barn, where,
arming himself with a flail, he repaired to a lane through which the
curate was under a necessity of passing in his way home. There he lay
in ambush with fell intent; and when the supposed author of his shame
arrived, greeted him in the dark with such a salutation as forced him
to stagger backward three paces at least. If the second application had
taken effect, in all probability that spot would have been the
boundary of the parson's mortal peregrination; but luckily for him, his
antagonist was not expert in the management of his weapon, which, by a
twist of the thong that connected the legs, instead of pitching upon the
head of the astonished curate, descended in an oblique direction on
his own pate, with such a swing that the skull actually rang like an
apothecary's mortar, and ten thousand lights seemed to dance before his
eyes. The curate recollecting himself during the respite he obtained
from this accident, and believing his aggressor to be some thief who
lurked in that place for prey, resolved to make a running fight, until
he should arrive within cry of his habitation. With this design he
raised up his cudgel for the defence of his head, and, betaking himself
to his heels, began to roar for help with the lungs of a Stentor.
Tunley, throwing away the flail, which he durst no longer trust with
the