'
'What is a little strange,' said the clerk quietly, 'is that Mr.
Dubois should deny it.'
I got it fair in the face, and took it smiling; but the shock was
rude, and in the course of the next words I contrived to do what I
have rarely done, and make a slip in my English. I kept my liberty
and life by my proficiency all these months, and for once that I
failed, it is not to be supposed that I would make a public
exhibition of the details. Enough, that it was a very little
error, and one that might have passed ninety-nine times in a
hundred. But my limb of the law was as swift to pick it up as
though he had been by trade a master of languages.
'Aha!' cries he; 'and you are French, too! Your tongue bewrays
you. Two Frenchmen coming into an alehouse, severally and
accidentally, not knowing each other, at ten of the clock at night,
in the middle of Bedfordshire? No, sir, that shall not pass! You
are all prisoners escaping, if you are nothing worse. Consider
yourselves under arrest. I have to trouble you for your papers.'
'Where is your warrant, if you come to that?' said I. 'My papers!
A likely thing that I would show my papers on the ipse dixit of an
unknown fellow in a hedge alehouse!'
'Would you resist the law?' says he.
'Not the law, sir!' said I. 'I hope I am too good a subject for
that.
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