orgive them," said the artist, "who confounded learned
skill with unlawful magic! I trust a man may be as skilful, or more so,
than the best chirurgeon ever meddled with horse-flesh, and yet may be
upon the matter little more than other ordinary men, or at the worst no
conjurer."

"God forbid else!" said Tressilian. "But be silent just for the present,
since here comes mine host with an assistant, who seems something of the
least."

Everybody about the inn, Dame Crane herself included, had been indeed
so interested and agitated by the story they had heard of Wayland Smith,
and by the new, varying, and more marvellous editions of the incident
which arrived from various quarters, that mine host, in his righteous
determination to accommodate his guests, had been able to obtain the
assistance of none of his household, saving that of a little boy, a
junior tapster, of about twelve years old, who was called Sampson.

"I wish," he said, apologizing to his guests, as he set down a flagon
of sack, and promised some food immediately--"I wish the devil had flown
away with my wife and my whole family instead of this Wayland Smith,
who, I daresay, after all said and done, was much less worthy of the
distinction which Satan has done him."

"I hold opinion with you, good fellow," replied Wayland Smith; "and I
will drink to you upon that argument."

"Not that I would justify any man who deals with the devil," said mine
host, after having pledged Wayland in a rousing draught of sack, "but
that--saw ye ever better sack, my masters?--but that, I say, a man had
better deal with a dozen cheats and scoundrel fellows, such as this
Wayland Smith, than with a devil incarnate, that takes possession of
house and home, bed and board."

The poor fellow's detail of grievances was here interrupted by the
shrill voice of his helpmate, screaming from the kitchen, to which he
instantly hobbled, craving pardon of his guests. He was no sooner gone
than Wayland Smith expressed, by every contemptuous epithet in the
language, his utter scorn for a nincompoop who stuck his head under
his wife's apron-string; and intimated that, saving for the sake of
the horses, which required both rest and food, he would advise his
worshipful Master Tressilian to push on a stage farther, rather than pay
a reckoning to such a mean-spirited, crow-trodden, henpecked coxcomb, as
Gaffer Crane.

The arrival of a large dish of good cow-heel and bacon something soothed
the