It therefore behoved me to make Nanse send him a cup of well-made tea, to see if it would act as a settler, but his heart stood at it, as if it had been 'cacuana, and do as he liked, he could not let a drop of it down his craig.

When the wife informed me of this, I at last luckily remembered the old saying about giving one a hair of the dog that bit him; and I made poor James swallow a thimbleful of malt spirits--the real unadulterated creatur, with wonderfully good effects.

Though then in his sixty-first year, James declares on his honour as a gentleman, that this was the first time he ever had fallen a victim to the barley- fever! How could we do otherwise! it afforded Nanse and I great pleasure--and no mistake--in acting the part of good Samaritans, by pouring oil and wine into his wounds; I having bound up his brow with a Sunday silk-napkin, and she having fomented his unfortunate ankle with warm water and hog's lard.

The truth is, that I found myself in conscience bound and obligated to take a deep interest in the decent man's distresses, he having come to his catastrophe in a cause of mine, and having fallen a victim to the snares and devices of Cursecowl, instead of myself, for whom the vagabond's girn was set.

Providence decided that, in this particular case, I should escape; but a better man, James Batter, was caught in it by the left ankle.