The despairing lover resembled an ogre who had not dined for two whole days, and was ready to devour the first comer.

What should he do?  Take revenge, or marry the perfidious woman?  Jinks did not doubt his ability to perform the latter; and thus he went on his way in doubt and wrath.

At least he would go that very morning and charge her with perfidy; and so having decided upon his course so far, he strode on rapidly.

Mr. Jinks bent his course toward Bousch’s tavern, where he proposed to take up his temporary residence.

Since this house has become historical, let us say a word of it.  It was one of those old wooden “ordinaries” of Virginia, which are now never seen in towns of any size, crouching only on the road-side or in obscure nooks, where the past lives still.  It was a building of large size, though but two stories in height, and even then presented an ancient appearance, with its low eaves, small-paned windows, and stone slab before the door.  Behind it was an old garden, and near at hand, two ponderous valves opened upon a large stable-yard full of bustling hostlers.

The neighborhood in which this ancient dwelling stood was not without a certain picturesqueness, thanks to the old, low-eaved houses, dating from the French-Indian wars, and grassy knolls, from which quarries of limestone stood out boldly; above all, because of the limpid stream, which, flowing from the west just by the portico of the old tavern, murmured gaily in the traveller’s ear, and leaped toward him as he crossed it, or allowed his weary animal to bathe his nostrils in the cool water.  Two or three majestic weeping-willows plunged their broad trunks and vigorous roots into the clear stream, and sighed forever over it, as, passing onward, it ran away from the Bousch hostelry toward its ocean, the Opequon.

This old tavern, which exists still, we believe, a venerable relic of the border past, was, in the year 1777, the abode of a “number of Quakers, together with one druggist and a dancing-master, sent to Winchester under guard, with a request from the Executive of Pennsylvania, directed to the County-Lieutenant of Frederick, to secure them.”  The reasons for this arrest and exile may be found in a Congressional report upon the subject, (Anno. 1776,) which states, that well-attested facts “rendered it certain and notorious that those persons were, with much rancour and bitterness, disaffected to the American cause;”—­for which reason they were requested to go and remain in durance at Winchester, in Virginia.  How they protested at Philadelphia against being taken into custody—­protested again at the Pennsylvania line against being carried out of that state—­protested again at the Maryland line against being taken into Virginia—­and ended by protesting at Winchester against everything in general—­it is all written in the Book of the Chronicles of the Valley of Virginia, by Mr. Samuel Kercheval, and also in an interesting Philadelphia publication, “Friends in Exile.”  To this day the old sun-dial in the garden of “Bousch’s Tavern” has upon it the inscription: