[THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE]
There was many an adventure befell me in a pretty broad circuit of life that tickled my ribs to a proper tune; and I have cackled over some escapades with a wider mouth than ever I sat out the most roaring comedy of the play-houses. Not but what there were some high-stepping pieces to my taste in the town—well enough to clap eyes on, no doubt, but cockatrices mighty greedy of the gullet, as you could spy at a glance. And, after all, a wench is no food for humour, but for another purpose altogether. I pin no faith upon 'em at the best. But of all the chances that I encountered, what most rarely served my palate was this unexpected meeting in the West Country, which, I will admit at the outset, and ere I saw clearly the shape of my predicament, set my heart a-bobbing fast enough. It fell in this way.
'Twas on a Monday in the late summer of that year of grace 1685 that I rode up from the valleys of the north in the company of Tony Flack, and we came to a pause upon the hind quarters of Exeter town. Tony himself was for caution, and would have us turn away to a little roadside tavern that we both knew for a safe resting-place, with a staunch innkeeper to boot. But I was for Exeter itself, for, to say the truth, my stomach was sour with those rank swipes of the country-side, and 'twas some days since I champed my teeth about a town. The facts argued with Tony, chicken-hearted as he was, and I will not deny it; for there right before us lay the argument, in the shape of a rumbling, muddy, parti-coloured chaise that was creeping up the hill. Now it had so fallen out, more by way of a jest than by any material design, that we had scarified the occupant of this same carriage some ten miles back in the thick of a waste moorland that afternoon. 'Twas a mere idle freak, taken out of wantonness and upon a merry dinner, and by no means for the sake of the guinea or two that we found in his pockets. Tony gives the nag a slap of his sword, and off she goes a-spinning down the highway for dear life, with the coachman all a-sweat with terror, and the melancholy visage of a gentleman in his red periwig hanging out of the window; while there we stood, the two of us, laughing a broadside. The nag had a piebald front to her, and the chaise, as I have said, was in several colours; and thus it happened that, the lights falling suddenly on 'em in that tail of the day, as we came out upon the back of Exeter, Tony drew up and shoved his paw forward with a mighty blank face.
"See there, Dick!" says he. "And what d'ye make of that?"
'Twas plain enough what I made of it, but I only laughed.
"I make a chaise and the half," says I, "and I'll warrant to make two by the time we reach Exeter," for, to be sure, swipes or no swipes, we had, each of us, a good warm lining to the stomach.
Tony cast me a surly glance. "Rot you!" said he, "an' if the liquor spoil your wits, I'll be damned if it shall mine. Nor I won't run my neck into the noose for you nor any like you."
"You're a white-livered sort of cur, you are, Tony," said I, with another laugh. "And I suppose the traps will be waiting for us in a posse outside the White Hart. And I shouldn't wonder if the topsman himself was to snatch off his hat to us as we passed by."
"Sink me!" growled Tony, "you forget 'twas broad daylight when we took 'em."
"Well," says I, "I have a notion to sleep in Exeter, and I mind me of a very dainty belly under my belt."