wanting but for the band to
strike up and the dancing to begin. In the exhilaration of my heart I
took the music on myself--

"Merrily danced the Quaker's wife,
And merrily danced the Quaker."

I broke into that animated and appropriate air, clapped my arm about
Dudgeon's waist, and away down the hill at a dancing step! He hung back
a little at the start, but the impulse of the tune, the night, and my
example, were not to be resisted. A man made of putty must have danced,
and even Dudgeon showed himself to be a human being. Higher and higher
were the capers that we cut; the moon repeated in shadow our antic
footsteps and gestures; and it came over my mind of a sudden--really
like balm--what appearance of man I was dancing with, what a long
bilious countenance he had shown under his shaven pate, and what a world
of trouble the rascal had given me in the immediate past.

Presently we began to see the lights of Bedford. My puritanic companion
stopped and disengaged himself.

"This is a trifle _infra dig._, sir, is it not?" said he. "A party might
suppose we had been drinking."

"And so you shall be, Dudgeon," said I. "You shall not only be drinking,
you old hypocrite, but you shall be drunk--dead drunk, sir--and the
boots shall put you to bed! We'll warn him when we go in. Never neglect
a precaution; never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day!"

But he had no more frivolity to complain of. We finished our stage and
came to the inn-door with decorum, to find the house still alight and in
a bustle with many late arrivals; to give our orders with a prompt
severity which ensured obedience, and to be served soon after at a
side-table, close to the fire and in a blaze of candle-light, with such
a meal as I had been dreaming of for days past. For days, you are to
remember, I had been skulking in the covered cart, a prey to cold,
hunger, and an accumulation of discomforts that might have daunted the
most brave; and the white table napery, the bright crystal, the
reverberation of the fire, the red curtains, the Turkey carpet, the
portraits on the coffee-room wall, the placid faces of the two or three
late guests who were silently prolonging the pleasures of digestion, and
(last, but not by any means least) a glass of an excellent light dry
port, put me in a humour only to be described as heavenly. The thought
of the Colonel, of how he would have enjoyed this snug room and roaring
fire, and of his cold grave in