CHAPTER I

BURIED ALIVE.--THE LANDLORD'S STORY.

"Bravo, Oldstone! A very capital story!" cried several members at once.

"It is a pity our host isn't here to have heard it."

"I heard a good part of it, though, gentlemen," said a voice from a dark corner of the room (for the lights had been extinguished, though it was still murky without).

"What, are you there, Jack?" cried Mr. Crucible. "We none of us saw you."

"Well, sir," said the landlord, "finding that I was not wanted outside as I thought, I ventured to enter the room quietly, so as not to disturb the story."

"Well done, Jack," said Hardcase, "and so you heard all, eh? Well, what do you think of it?"

"Pretty nearly all, I guess, sir," replied the landlord, "and a curious one it is, too, and no mistake. But talk of being buried alive, I could tell you a queer adventure that happened to myself, if you gentlemen would care to hear it."

"Only be too glad, Jack," said Oldstone. "Out with it; there is nothing like a good story to beguile the time in weather like this."

Our host, thus encouraged, drew his chair close to the fire, and his example was immediately followed by his guests. Then, refilling his yard of clay and lighting it in the fire, he gave one or two preliminary whiffs, and commenced his story thus:--

Well, gentlemen, when I was a youngster, that is to say, a lad of nineteen, I fell deeply in love with my Molly, who, though I say it, was the finest lass in the village and for miles round it. For all the world like my Helen, at her age, bless her dear heart! She was the daughter of a rich miller--his only child. Well, it had been a long attachment, for Molly and I were play-mates when we was little, but when I grew to be about nineteen, and my father began to see that I was head over ears in love with Molly, he forbade me to see any more of her, because he and old Sykes--leastways, Molly's father, the miller--wasn't friends, d'ye see.

Nevertheless, Molly and I used to get a peep at each other on the sly like, and often took long walks together when no one was near.

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