!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

God bless our King and Parliament,
And send he may make such knaves repent!
Loyal Songs against the Rump Parliament.

Ho, treachery! my guards, my cimeter!
BYRON.

When the irreverent Mr. Pepper had warmed his hands sufficiently to be
able to transfer them from the fire, he lifted the right palm, and with
an indecent jocularity of spirits, accosted the ci-devant ornament of
"The Asinaeum" with a sounding slap on his back, or some such part of
his conformation.

"Ah, old boy!" said he, "is this the way you keep house for us? A fire
not large enough to roast a nit, and a supper too small to fatten him
beforehand! But how the deuce should you know how to provender for
gentlemen? You thought you were in Scotland, I'll be bound!"

"Perhaps he did when he looked upon you, Ned!" said Tomlinson, gravely;
"'t is but rarely out of Scotland that a man can see so big a rogue in
so little a compass!"

Mr. MacGrawler, into whose eyes the palmistry of Long Ned had brought
tears of sincere feeling, and who had hitherto been rubbing the
afflicted part, now grumbled forth,--

"You may say what you please, Mr. Pepper, but it is not often in my
country that men of genius are seen performing the part of cook to
robbers!"

"No!" quoth Tomlinson, "they are performing the more profitable part of
robbers to cooks, eh!"

"Damme, you're out," cried Long Ned,--"for in that country there are
either no robbers, because there is nothing to rob; or the inhabitants
are all robbers, who have plundered one another, and made away with the
booty!"

"May the de'il catch thee!" said MacGrawler, stung to the quick,--for,
like all Scots, he was a patriot; much on the same principle as a woman
who has the worst children makes the best mother.

"The de'il," said Ned, mimicking the "silver sound," as Sir W. Scott
had been pleased facetiously to call the "mountain tongue" (the Scots
in general seem to think it is silver, they keep it so carefully)
"the de'il,--MacDeil, you mean, sure, the gentleman must have been a
Scotchman!"

The sage grinned in spite; but remembering the patience of Epictetus
when a slave, and mindful also of the strong arm of Long Ned, he curbed
his temper, and tur