Part 6 (2/2)

”There!” cried Featherstone turning to the landlord. ”You hear? Mr.

Berkeley is a gentleman beyond reproach. He shut the door behind him, and this morning I find it wide open and my breeches gone. There is a thief, sir, in your inn, and we travellers must go on our way without breeches. It is the most inconsiderate theft that ever I heard of.”

”As for the breeches, sir,” began the landlord.

”I don't care a b.u.t.ton for them,” cried Featherstone. ”But there was money in the breeches' pockets. Fifteen guineas in gold, and a couple of bills on Mr. Nossiter, the banker at Exeter.”

”The bills can be stopped,” said the landlord. ”We are but eighteen miles from Exeter.”

”But how am I to travel those miles; do you expect me to walk there in my s.h.i.+rt tails. No, I stay here in bed until my breeches are found, and, burn me, if I don't eat up everything in the house,” and immediately he began to roar out for food. ”I will have chops at once, and there's a great sirloin of beef, and bring me a tankard of small ale.”

Then he turned again to me, and said pathetically,

”It is not the breeches I mind, though to be sure I shall cut a ridiculous figure on the highroad; no, nor the money, though I have not a stiver left. But I woke up this morning in the sweetest good-humour, and here am I in a violent pa.s.sion at nine o'clock in the morning, and my whole day spoilt. It is so discouraging,” and he lay back upon the pillow as though he would have wept.

The landlord offered him his Sunday breeches. They were of red cloth, and a belted earl might wear them without shame.

”But not without discomfort,” grumbled Mr. Featherstone, contemplating the landlord who was of a large figure. ”They will hang about me in swathes like a petticoat.”

”And as for the fifteen guineas,” said I, ”my purse is to that amount at your disposal.”

”That is a very gentlemanly offer, Mr. Berkeley,” said he, ”from one stranger to another. But I have a horror of borrowing. I cannot accept your munificence. No, I will walk in my host's red cloth breeches as far as Rockbere, which to be sure is no more than twelve miles, quite penniless, but when I reach my friends, upon my word, I will make such a noise about this inn as will close its doors, strike me dead and stiff, if don't.”

His threat had its effect. The landlord, after the usual protestations that such an incident had never occurred before, that he had searched the house even to the servants' boxes, and that he could make neither head nor tail of the business, wound up his harangue with an offer of five guineas.

”It is all I have in the house, sir,” said he, ”and of course I shall charge you neither for food nor lodging.”

”Of course not,” said Mr. Featherstone indignantly. ”Well, I must make the best of it, but oh! I woke up with so happy a disposition towards the world;” and dismissing the women he got up and dressed. The landlord fetched the five guineas and his red cloth breeches, which Featherstone drew on.

”Was ever a man so vilely travestied?” he said. ”Sure, I shall be taken for a Hollander. That is hard for a person of some elegance,”

and he tied his cravat and went grumbling from the room.

”This is a great misfortune, sir, for me,” said my host. ”I have lived honest all my days. There is no one in the house who would steal; on that I would stake my life. I can make nothing of it.”

”Mr. Featherstone is quite recovered from his ague,” said I slowly. I crossed over to the empty fireplace heaped with the white ashes of the logs which had blazed there the night before.

”The fire no doubt did him some benefit.”

”That is precisely what I was thinking,” said I, and I knelt down on the hearth-rug and poked amongst the ashes with the shovel. Suddenly, the landlord uttered an exclamation and threw up the window. I heard the clatter of a horse's hoofs upon the road. I got up from my knees and rushed to the window. As I leaned out Mr. Featherstone rode underneath and he rode my horse.

”Stop!” I shouted out.

”Mr. Berkeley,” he cried, airily waving his hand as he rode by, ”you may hold very good putt cards, but you haven't kept your horse.”

”You d.a.m.ned thief!” I yelled, and he turned in his saddle and put out his tongue. It is, if you think of it, a form of repartee to which there is no reply. In any case I doubt if I could have made any reply which would have reached his ears. For he had set the horse to a gallop and was far down the road.

I went back to the hearth where the landlord joined me. We both knelt down and raked away the ashes.

<script>