'I beg your pardon,' I gasped to a neighbour, 'what is this? what
has he done? is it allowed?'
'Why, where do you come from?' replied the man.
'I am a traveller, sir,' said I, 'and a total stranger in this part
of the country. I had lost my way when I saw your torches, and
came by chance on this--this incredible scene. Who was the man?'
'A suicide,' said he. '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.
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