turns to his
lodge.

They gave me a bedroom there; a very neat room on the first floor,
looking into the pretty garden. The hotel must look pretty much as it
did a hundred years ago when HE visited it. I wonder whether he paid his
bill? Yes: his journey was just begun. He had borrowed or got the money
somehow. Such a man would spend it liberally enough when he had it, give
generously--nay, drop a tear over the fate of the poor fellow whom he
relieved. I don't believe a word he says, but I never accused him of
stinginess about money. That is a fault of much more virtuous people
than he. Mr. Laurence is ready enough with his purse when there are
anybody's guineas in it. Still when I went to bed in the room, in HIS
room; when I think how I admire, dislike, and have abused him, a certain
dim feeling of apprehension filled my mind at the midnight hour. What if
I should see his lean figure in the black-satin breeches, his sinister
smile, his long thin finger pointing to me in the moonlight (for I am
in bed, and have popped my candle out), and he should say, "You mistrust
me, you hate me, do you? And you, don't you know how Jack, Tom,
and Harry, your brother authors, hate YOU?" I grin and laugh in the
moonlight, in the midnight, in the silence. "O you ghost in black-satin
breeches and a wig! I like to be hated by some men," I say. "I know men
whose lives are a scheme, whose laughter is a conspiracy, whose smile
means something else, whose hatred is a cloak, and I had rather these
men should hate me than not."

"My good sir," says he, with a ghastly grin on his lean face, "you have
your wish."

"Apres?" I say. "Please let me go to sleep. I shan't sleep any the worse
because--"

"Because there are insects in the bed, and they sting you?" (This is
only by way of illustration, my good sir; the animals don't bite me now.
All the house at present seems to me excellently clean.) "'Tis absurd
to affect this indifference. If you are thin-skinned, and the reptiles
bite, they keep you from sleep."

"There are some men who cry out at a flea-bite as loud as if they were
torn by a vulture," I growl.

"Men of the genus irritabile, my worthy good gentleman!--and you are
one."

"Yes, sir, I am of the profession, as you say; and I dare say make a
great shouting and crying at a small hurt."

"You are ashamed of that quality by which you earn your subsistence,
and such reputation as you have? Your sensibility is your livelihood, my
wo