“I shall not forget the first I received,” observed I.
“But you’ll never repeat that riot,” significantly returned Trimbush. “It was a christening not to slip through the memory as if it had no knots tied in it.”
“But then,” added I, “in coming across the slot of deer, the scent was so sweet and grateful that I couldn’t refrain from carrying a head.”
“Well,” said Trimbush, “like luxuries of other descriptions, you paid for the enjoyment.”
“And dear as the cost was,” replied I, “it’s very doubtful whether I might not be inclined to have another flutter at the same feather.”
“What! swallow a hackle of the dog that bit ye?” rejoined my friend.
“It’s a common case, I’ve heard, with our betters,” returned I.
“Right again,” added my companion. “Fire puts out fire.”
“I suppose,” observed I, “that you’ve felt, before now, an inclination to repeat an error, convinced as ye may have been of its impropriety.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Trimbush, drawing in the breath between his teeth with a hissing sound; “that I have. We are as clannish as Scotsmen, and support each other through thick and thin, in the same mortar-an’-brick fashion. If one of us is a marked and confirmed rebel, he seldom repeats his fault without lots of company to back him. The season before last, a hound was sent here from the north country, and as sulky and ill-tempered a brute as was ever seen in a kennel. We all hated him; and yet, strange as it may appear, upon Ned Adams attempting to drive him from the lodging-house one morning, in consequence of his refusal to come when called, he flew at him, and, fastening upon his shoulder, was instantly joined by half the hounds in the court.”