Chap. III12

The door was now strongly barricaded within side, and Wansford, soon recovering himself, sent his friends to procure for themselves the refreshments his wife was by the terror she had undergone disqualified to fetch for them. He then attended Althea to her room, where he briefly related to her, that, having gone, according to his weekly custom, late in the afternoon to the Three Horse-shoes, a small ale-house and smith’s shop, where letters and parcels were left, he had found drinking there a very creditable looking man, a stranger in those parts, who said he was on the road to see a nephew of his, who had married his daughter, and rented a large farm not far from Plymouth, where he was thriving apace. – He was a little tired, he said, with his two days journey: for he had come the day before from beyond Ringwood in Hampshire, and so thought to put up at the Three Horse-shoes for the night. ‘A seemed a vast plausible man, said Wansford – ‘and a knew all the goings on in London, and concerning the war, and such like; and me thought he was a sensible dissarning¹⁴ sort of a man; and I found a knew abundance of people about Hampshire: and I you know, Miss, being a Hampshire: man, liked well enough to talk over the people we both knew in that country; for he might be for age, I thought, about my own standing. – At first we had only a pint of cyder a-piece; but he said he would not part with an old countryman so – we would have a tiff of punch – and he must needs treat me. – And so, my dear Madam – But what shall we say? – Every man may be overtaken sometimes. – I’m not more like to be free from that there, you know, than another. – What was the upshot? – Gads my life, if I don’t believe though that the cheating fly rascal put summot in my drink, for after a little – and yet my head’s as strong as my neighbours – after a little, d’ye see, I becomed all of sudden as muzzled!¹⁵ as muzzled! – and then the villain went away and left me – and when I woke, landlady told me what o’clock it was, and as how I had been fast asleep ever so long; but she wa’n’t willing, she said, to disturb me. – Gads my life, I began to look sharp – for, thinks I, may be this same fly rogue, with his long story, have stole my watch, and my money – though my money was not no great matters. However, they were both as safe as 205could be. – Eh! thinks I, bethought me, that may be ’twas some trick of that son of Belzebub himself, Vampyre. – Ah! ha! thinks I, master of mine, be you thereabouts? – You’re devilish cunning – but ’twon’t do this time. – You must try again, old pettifog.¹⁶ – But I bethought me, Miss, that l’d get two or three honest fellows to come home with me; which they were willing enough to leave their beds for to do, for they’re all pretty keen upon the scent of that rascally polecat of a lawyer. – So away we comes – and found the carrion crows sure enough. – I believe they won’t come again in a hurry. – Egad, they’ve had enough on’t. – But if they’ve a mind to try again, why let’um. – No harm done, you know,’ continued Wansford, winking significantly at Althea – ‘no harm at all done – for the bird you know is flown, and I for my part’ – (and he reached down an old musket without a lock from the chimney rack)’for my part, if they do come – I’d no more mind shooting that old pillory-faced¹⁷ blood-hound through the head, than I would mad dog – no, nor so much.’