Serjeant.—Some belated drover, I’ll warrant. What an awful night the poor man has had to travel in!
Clifford.—If there be, as philosophers say, no happiness equal to that of being relieved from misery, I think that he who knocks, whoever he may be, is to be envied for the sudden transition he is about to make from all the horrors of night, rain, tempest, and bogs, and swollen burns, to the comforts of this room, such as they are, and especially to this glorious fire.
Author.—What a time they are losing in letting him in!
Serjeant.—I suspect they will have enough ado to get the door opened, without being knocked down by the blast.
Author.—They have let him in at last. Whoever he may be, we must make room for the poor fellow at our fireside.
Grant.—Certainly; I’ll go and bring him in here: nay, I see I need not, for here he comes.
Clifford.—What a figure the poor man is! He looks like a newly landed river-god, or like Behemoth himself, come forth from the mighty deeps.
Serjeant.—Whoever he may be, his own father could not know him, were he to see him at this moment, with his whole clothes so bedraggled, and that face of his so clatched up with moss-dirt, that not a feature of it can be seen.
Clifford.—He is like a moving peat-bog, I declare.
Author.—Bless me, how the poor wretch shivers!