l."

When he had left me alone, I considered my own valour with amazement. I
had insulted him; I had sent him away alone; now, if ever, he would take
what was the only sensible resource, and fetch the constable. But there
was something instinctively treacherous about the man which shrank from
plain courses. And, with all his cleverness, he missed the occasion of
fame. Rowley and I were suffered to walk out of his door, with all our
baggage, on foot, with no destination named, except in the vague
statement that we were come "to view the lakes"; and my friend only
watched our departure with his chin in his hand, still moodily
irresolute.

I think this one of my great successes. I was exposed, unmasked,
summoned to do a perfectly natural act which must prove my doom, and
which I had not the slightest pretext for refusing. I kept my head,
stuck to my guns, and, against all likelihood, here I was once more at
liberty and in the king's highway. This was a strong lesson never to
despair; and, at the same time, how many hints to be cautious! and what
a perplexed and dubious business the whole question of my escape now
appeared! That I should have risked perishing upon a trumpery question
of a _pourboire_, depicted in lively colours the perils that perpetually
surrounded us. Though, to be sure, the initial mistake had been
committed before that; and if I had not suffered myself to be drawn a
little deep in confidences to the innocent Dolly, there need have been
no tumble at the inn of Kirkby-Lonsdale. I took the lesson to heart, and
promised myself in the future to be more reserved. It was none of my
business to attend to broken chaises or shipwrecked travellers. I had my
hands full of my own affairs; and my best defence would be a little more
natural selfishness and a trifle less imbecile good-nature.

CHAPTER XXV

I MEET A CHEERFUL EXTRAVAGANT

I pass over the next fifty or sixty leagues of our journey without
comment. The reader must be growing weary of scenes of travel; and for
my own part I have no cause to recall these particular miles with any
pleasure. We were mainly occupied with attempts to obliterate our trail,
which (as the result showed) were far from successful; for, on my cousin
following, he was able to run me home with the least possible loss of
time, following the claret-coloured chaise to Kirkby-Lonsdale, where I
think the landlord must have wept to learn what he had missed, and
tracing us therea