e foggy voice of the
hostler predominated at first. He was running down Captain Cowen to a
pot-boy. The pot-boy stood up for him. That annoyed Cox. He spoke
louder and louder the more he was opposed, till at last he bawled out,
"I tell ye I've seen him a-sitting by the judge, and I've seen him in
the dock."

At these words Captain Cowen recoiled, though he was already out of
sight, and his eye glittered like a basilisk's.

But immediately a new voice broke upon the scene, a woman's. "Thou
foul-mouthed knave! Is it for thee to slander men of worship, and give
the inn a bad name? Remember I have but to lift my finger to hang
thee, so drive me not to't. Begone to thy horses this moment; thou art
not fit to be among Christians. Begone, I say, or it shall be the
worse for thee;" and she drove him across the yard, and followed him up
with a current of invectives, eloquent even at a distance though the
words were no longer distinct: and who should this be but the
housemaid, Barbara Lamb, so gentle, mellow, and melodious before the
gentlefolk, and especially her hero, Captain Cowen!

As for Daniel Cox, he cowered, writhed, and wriggled away before her,
and slipped into the stable.

Captain Cowen was now soured by trouble, and this persistent enmity of
that fellow roused at last a fixed and deadly hatred in his mind, all
the more intense that fear mingled with it.

He sounded Barbara; asked her what nonsense that ruffian had been
talking, and what he had done that she could hang him for. But Barbara
would not say a malicious word against a fellow-servant in cold blood.
"I can keep a secret," said she. "If he keeps his tongue off you, I'll
keep mine."

"So be it," said Cowen. "Then I warn you I am sick of his insolence;
and drunkards must be taught not to make enemies of sober men nor fools
of wise men." He said this so bitterly that, to soothe him, she begged
him not to trouble about the ravings of a sot. "Dear heart," said she,
"nobody heeds Dan Cox."

Some days afterward she told him that Dan had been drinking harder than
ever, and wouldn't trouble honest folk long, for he had the delusions
that go before a drunkard's end; why, he had told the stable-boy he had
seen a vision of himself climb over the garden wall, and enter the
house by the back door. "The poor wretch says he knew himself by his
bottle nose and his cowskin waistcoat; and, to be sure, there is no
such nose in the parish--thank Heaven for'