Morning dawned through the guard-room lattice before Samuel Pryme awoke. If there be a feeling more horrible than another, it is the return of reason to a drunken neophyte when he wakens after his first debauch. The quaker stared wildly round him; there were twenty men in the room—all strangers to him; some sleeping on the wooden bench on which he lay, and others sitting smoking by the fire. His head was giddy—his brain wandered—he was tortured with a burning thirst. Where was he? Suddenly his pale cheeks reddened with shame; he felt like a Hindu who has lost caste; and, burying his face between his hands, in a smothered voice that bespoke a consciousness of abasement, while tears fell fast, he faintly murmured, “Where am I?”
The sergeant laid aside a book which he had been reading in the window—and, though a rough soldier, he felt sincerely for the penitent.
“Don’t take on so,” said he. “Young folk will be giddy. Bless your heart—there’s none of our gentlemen that arn’t wildish now and then. I wish we could get you something to drink; but the canteen is closed. Would you like to go home? I dare not spare a man; but I’ll send for Mr. O’Halloran’s servant, and pass him through the gate.” The quaker thanked him, but declined assistance; asked for and received a draught of water “cold from the pump,” the sentry unclosed the wicket, and Samuel Pryme returned to his father’s house, “a sadder, if not a wiser man,” than when he quitted it the preceding evening.
The clock struck five. Peter Bradley was snoring on his guard-bed, and Mr. French taking his ease at an unpretending hostelrie in Smock Alley, not generally known in the fashionable world, but, patronized by the pleasant part of the community, and ycleped “The Hole in the Wall.” I felt as much at home in my dormitory as if I had been legal proprietor of it, while he, unhappy youth! reconnoitred the house from the outside, with all the suspicion of a man who meditates a burglary on the premises. In their respective chambers, Mrs. Pryme and her handmaiden had owned the influence of the drowsy god, and Rachel slumbered with as safe a conscience as if she had never kissed a fusileer. There is an old saw, gentle reader, which insinuates that it is prudent occasionally to allow “sleeping dogs to lie.” We’ll adopt it “for the nonce”—inquire what had befallen that alter ego, my foster-brother, and, with your gracious permission, follow through the next chapter, the fortunes of Mark Antony O’Toole.
CHAPTER IX. THE COCK AND PUNCH-BOWL
“Rosalind. Here’s a young maid with travel much oppress’d,
And faints for succour.”
“Corin. I pity her,