Page:Long pack, or, A shot with Copenhagen (2).pdf/4

 you must leave them, or get a horse to carry them away." "Of all the sweet inflexible beings that ever were made, you certainly are the chief. But I cannot blame you, your resolution is just and right. Well, well, since no better may be, I must leave them, and go search for lodgings myself somewhere else, for, fatigued as am, it is as much as my life is worth to endeavour carrying them further." Alice was rather taken at her word: she wanted nothing to do with his goods: the man was displeased at her, and might accuse her of stealing some of them; but it was an alternative she had proposed, and against which she could start no plausible objection; so she consented, though with much reluctance.— "But the pack will be better out of your way," said he, "and safer, if you will be so kind as lock it by in some room or closet." She then led him into a low parlour, where he placed it carefully on two chairs, and went away, wishing Alice a good night.

When old Alice and the pack were left together in the large house by themselves, she felt a kind of undefined terror come over her mind about it. "What can be in it," said she to herself, "that makes it so heavy?" Surely when the man carried it this length, he might have carried it farther too— It is a confoundedly queer pack: I'll go and look at it once again, and see what I think is in it; and suppose I should handle it all round, I may then herhapsperhaps [sic] have a good guess what is it in."

Alice went cautiously and fearfully into the parlour and opened a wall-press—she wanted no-