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302 "There's a light yonder across the common. You'd better trot over there, yon and your old woman, and knock 'em up. I don't know the country just here." And off he went like lightning.

"His advice very good, my old man," said my companion. " I take your arm, and we trot. Come, rum chap."

There was no help for it. I succumbed, and we had a squashy walk over a pathless and furzy common, half a mile in diameter. My companion had a knack of tumbling down in a sitting attitude at the faintest provocation; and if I lifted her up once I lifted her up twenty times. Twenty times sixteen stone is exactly two tons—which represents the weight I lifted off Copley Common that night. (I have since had reason to believe that her actual weight was fifteen stone three, but I say sixteen stone because I take into consideration the moisture with which her clothes were saturated.)

At length, after twenty minutes' difficult walking, we reached the light that had attracted our attention. It proceeded from the window of a very small cottage. We knocked, and eventually the door was opened to us. In the meantime, my companion, who had informed me that her name was Dolly Fortescue, sang negro songs in a deep contralto.

"Wot is it?" said the cottager.

"There has been an accident on the line, and we want shelter."

"Wot'll you give?"