'Ay, he was a bad one, was Johnnie Green.' It appeared this was a wretch who had committed many barbarous murders, and being at last upon the point of discovery fell of his own hand.

And the nightmare at the crossroads was the regular punishment, according to the laws of England, for an act which the Romans honoured as a virtue! Whenever an Englishman begins to prate of civilisation (as, indeed, it's a defect they are rather prone to), I hear the measured blows of a mallet, see the bystanders crowd with torches about the grave, smile a little to myself in conscious superiority--and take a thimbleful of brandy for the stomach's sake.
I believe it must have been at my next stage, for I remember going to bed extremely early, that I came to the model of a good old-fashioned English inn, and was attended on by the picture of a pretty chambermaid.

We had a good many pleasant passages as she waited table or warmed my bed for me with a devil of a brass warming pan, fully larger than herself; and as she was no less pert than she was pretty, she may be said to have given rather better than she took.

I cannot tell why (unless it were for the sake of her saucy eyes), but I made her my confidante, told her I was attached to a young lady in Scotland, and received the encouragement of her sympathy, mingled and connected with a fair amount of rustic wit.
While I slept the down-mail stopped for supper; it chanced that one of the passengers left behind a copy of the _Edinburgh Courant_, and the next morning my pretty chambermaid set the paper before me at breakfast, with the remark that there was some news from my lady-love.

I took it eagerly, hoping to find some further word of our escape, in which I was disappointed; and I was about to lay it down, when my eye fell on a paragraph immediately concerning me.