Page:Four interesting tales.pdf/18

18 harmless a creature as any betwixt Scotland and Ireland.—His lordship, intending to rise early in the morning, to make up the time thus sacrificed in the night, which was still stormy, ordered tho servant to show him to his chamber.—As he passed tho common room which communicated with the parlour, he noticed the innkeeper and his wife in earnest discourse with three men, muffled up in horseman’s coats, who seemed to have just come from buffeting the tempest, and not a little anxious to counteract its effects ; for both tho landlord and his wife were filling their glasses with spirits. His lordship, on going to his chamber, after the maid and his own servant, heard a fierce growl, as from tho top of the stairs. “Here is the dog again, my lord,” exclaimed the servant.—“HoHe [sic] is often cross and churlish to strangers,” observed the maid, “yet he never bites.” As they came nearer the door, his growl increased to a furious bark; but upon the maid speaking to him sharply, he suffered her to enter the chamber, and the servant stepped back to hold tho light to his lord. On his old mastormaster [sic] advancing towards the chamber, the dog drew back, and stood with a determined air of opposition, as if to guard the entrance. His lordship then called the dog by his name, and on repeating some terms of fondness, which, in past times, he had familiarly been accustomed to, he licked the hand from whose endearments ho had so long been estranged.

But he still held firm to his purpose, and endeavoured to oppose his master’s passing to the chamber. Yet the servant was suffered, without further disputing the point, to go out; not, however, without another growl, though one rather of anger than resistance, and which accompanied her with increased fierceness all the way down stairs, which shoshe [sic] descondeddescended [sic] with thothe [sic] same strange kind of hurry and confusion that marked her behaviour ever since his