ue feeling that his last struggle above water was over.

His feet immediately touched the bottom; he stood erect, little above
his middle, and quite out of the main current, within half-a-dozen steps
of the bank, and he found himself--he scarcely knew how--on terra firma,
impounded in a little flower-garden, with lilacs and laburnums, and
sweet-briars, and, through a window close at hand, whom should he see
but Dangerfield, who was drying his hands in a towel; and, as Cluffe
stood for a moment, letting the water pour down through his sleeves, he
further saw him make some queer little arrangements, and eventually pour
out and swallow a glass of brandy, and was tempted to invoke his aid on
the spot; but some small incivilities which he had bestowed upon
Dangerfield, when he thought he cherished designs upon Aunt Rebecca,
forbade; and at that moment he spied the little wicket that opened upon
the road, and Dangerfield stept close up to the window, and cried
sternly, 'Who's there?' with his grim spectacles close to the window.

The boyish instinct of 'hide and seek' took possession of Cluffe, and he
glided forth from the precincts of the Brass Castle upon the high road,
just as the little hall-door was pushed open, and he heard the harsh
tones of Dangerfield challenging the gooseberry bushes and hollyhocks,
and thrashing the evergreens with his cane.

Cluffe hied straight to his lodgings, and ordered a sack posset. Worthy
Mrs. Mason eyed him in silent consternation, drenched and dishevelled,
wild, and discharging water from every part of his clothing and
decorations, as he presented himself without a hat, before her dim dipt
candle in the hall.

'I'll take that--that vessel, if you please, Sir, that's hanging about
your neck,' said the mild and affrighted lady, meaning Puddock's guitar,
through the circular orifice of which, under the chords, the water with
which it was filled occasionally splashed.

'Oh--eh?--the instrument?--confound it!' and rather sheepishly he got
the gray red and gold ribbon over his dripping head, and placing it in
her hand without explanation, he said--'A warming-pan as quickly as may
be, I beg, Mrs. Mason--and the posset, I do earnestly request. You
see--I--I've been nearly drowned--and--and I can't answer for
consequences if there be one minute's delay.

And up he went streaming, with Mrs. Mason's candle, to his bed-room, and
dragged off his clinging garments, and dried his fat body, like a m