“But you surely know where you are?”
“No, the fact is I’ve just popped down here in a balloon, and I require help.”
“Oh, that’s it; well, if you go to the ‘Red Lion’ down the street I daresay you’ll get what you want; the landlord is a retired fighting man, and he’ll put you to rights in no time.”
While I was in the act of laughing, my suspicious adviser moved off in an evident state of doubt and alarm, so I pressed forward down the street, and was glad to hear the measured steps of a policeman.
As he appeared I thus accosted him:—
“Officer, I am glad to have met you, being a stranger and not knowing what county I am in. I have just——.”
The bull’s eye was immediately turned, and my liberating iron scanned, when the policeman backed a step or two and said, “Oh, you don’t know what county you’re in, don’t ye. Well, I should think you know the county gaol pretty well.”
Whether it was the provoking way in which I burst out laughing, or my close resemblance to some criminal character, I cannot say, but the officer drew himself together as if he were about to encounter a robber, and before I could speak with becoming gravity he held up his lantern and assured me that if I did not immediately move off out of the village he should take me to the station house.
“That’s just where I am going either with or without you as an escort,” I said; “but mind what you are about officer, the fact is, I have descended in a balloon not far from here this evening, and I have come for assistance. Which, pray, is the ‘Red Lion’?”
“I thought,” rejoined the policeman, “You didn’t know what county you were in; we had quite enough of you fellows a fortnight ago, and if you hang about here I shall take you into custody.”