ushy
beard, produced on the whole a most hideous caricatura. After all, there
was a necessity for the administration of the surgeon, who found divers
contusions on different parts of the skull, which even the tin cap had
not been able to protect from the weapons of the rustics.

These being shaved and dressed secundum artem, and the operator dismissed
with a proper acknowledgment, our knight detached one of the post-boys to
the field of action for intelligence concerning Mr. Clarke and squire
Timothy, and, in the interim, desired to know the particulars of Crowe's
adventures since he parted from him at the White Hart.

A connected relation, in plain English, was what he had little reason to
expect from the novice, who, nevertheless, exerted his faculties to the
uttermost for his satisfaction. He give him to understand, that in
steering his course to Birmingham, where he thought of fitting himself
with tackle, he had fallen in, by accident, at a public-house, with an
itinerant tinker, in the very act of mending a kettle; that, seeing him
do his business like an able workman, he had applied to him for advice,
and the tinker, after having considered the subject, had undertaken to
make him such a suit of armour as neither sword nor lance should
penetrate; that they adjourned to the next town, where the leather coat,
the plates of tinned iron, the lance, and the broadsword, were purchased,
together with a copper saucepan, which the artist was now at work upon in
converting it to a shield; but in the meantime, the captain, being
impatient to begin his career of chivalry, had accommodated himself with
a pot-lid, and taken to the highway, notwithstanding all the entreaties,
tears, and remonstrances of his nephew, Tom Clarke, who could not however
be prevailed upon to leave him in the dangerous voyage he had undertaken.

That this being but the second day of his journey, he descried five or
six men on horseback bearing up full in his teeth, upon which he threw
his sails aback, and prepared for action; that he hailed them at a
considerable distance, and bade them bring to; when they came alongside,
notwithstanding his hail, he ordered them to clew up their courses, and
furl their topsails, otherwise he would be foul of their quarters; that,
hearing this salute, they luffed all at once, till their cloth shook in
the wind; then he hallooed in a loud voice, that his sweetheart, Besselia
Mizzen, were the broad pendant of beauty, t