distinguish him, because there was not a
candle burning in the house.

It is impossible to describe the rage and vexation of our hero, while he
continued thus tantalized upon the brink of bliss, after his desire had
been exasperated by the circumstances of his former disappointments. He
ejaculated a thousand execrations against his own fortune, cursed all
his fellow-travellers without exception, vowed revenge against the
painter, who had twice confounded his most interesting scheme, and was
tempted to execute immediate vengeance upon the unknown cause of his
present miscarriage. In this agony of distraction did he sweat two
whole hours in the passage, though not without some faint hope of being
delivered from his tormentor, who, he imagined, upon waking, would
undoubtedly shift his quarters, and leave the field free to his designs;
but when he heard the cock repeat his salutation to the morn, which
began to open on the rear of night, he could no longer restrain his
indignation. Going to his own chamber, he filled a basin with cold
water, and, standing at some distance, discharged it full in the face
of the gaping snorer, who, over and above the surprise occasioned by the
application, was almost suffocated by the liquor that entered his
mouth, and ran down into his windpipe. While he gasped like a person
half-drowned, without knowing the nature of his disaster, or remembering
the situation in which he fell asleep, Peregrine retired to his own
door, and, to his no small astonishment, from a long howl that invaded
his ears, learned that the patient was no other than Pallet, who had
now, for the third time, balked his good fortune.

Enraged at the complicated trespasses of this unfortunate offender,
he rushed from his apartment with a horsewhip, and, encountering the
painter in his flight, overturned him in the passage. There he exercised
the instrument of his wrath with great severity on pretence of mistaking
him for some presumptuous cur, which had disturbed the repose of the
inn: nay, when he called aloud for mercy in a supplicating tone, and his
chastiser could no longer pretend to treat him as a quadruped, such was
the virulence of the young gentleman's indignation, that he could
not help declaring his satisfaction, by telling Pallet he had richly
deserved the punishment he had undergone, for his madness, folly, and
impertinence, in contriving and executing such idle schemes, as had no
other tendency than that of pla