rms for the kindness I had
shown to his servant in the affair of the thunder-storm. Then saying
that he was informed I was out of employ, he assured me that he should be
most happy to engage me to keep his hay and corn account, and as general
superintendent of the yard, and that with respect to the horse, which he
was told I had, he begged to inform me that I was perfectly at liberty to
keep it at the inn upon the very best, until I could find a purchaser;
that with regard to wages--but he had no sooner mentioned wages than I
cut him short, saying that provided I stayed I should be most happy to
serve him for bed and board, and requested that he would allow me until
the next morning to consider of his offer; he willingly consented to my
request, and, begging that I would call for anything I pleased, left me
alone with the postillion.

I passed that night until about ten o'clock with the postillion, when he
left me, having to drive a family about ten miles across the country;
before his departure, however, I told him that I had determined to accept
the offer of his governor, as he called him. At the bottom of my heart I
was most happy that an offer had been made, which secured to myself and
the animal a comfortable retreat at a moment when I knew not whither in
the world to take myself and him.

CHAPTER XXIV

AN INN OF TIMES GONE BY--A FIRST-RATE PUBLICAN--HAY AND
CORN--OLD-FASHIONED OSTLER--HIGHWAYMEN--MOUNTED POLICE--GROOMING

The inn of which I had become an inhabitant was a place of infinite life
and bustle. Travellers of all descriptions, from all the cardinal
points, were continually stopping at it: and to attend to their wants,
and minister to their convenience, an army of servants, of one
description or other, was kept--waiters, chambermaids, grooms,
postillions, shoe-blacks, cooks, scullions, and what not, for there was a
barber and hair-dresser, who had been at Paris, and talked French with a
cockney accent, the French sounding all the better, as no accent is so
melodious as the cockney. Jacks creaked in the kitchens turning round
spits, on which large joints of meat piped and smoked before the great
big fires. There was running up and down stairs, and along galleries,
slamming of doors, cries of 'Coming, sir,' and 'Please to step this way,
ma'am,' during eighteen hours of the four-and-twenty. Truly a very great
place for life and bustle was this inn. And often in after life, when
lonely and