Having succeeded in restoring the fair patient to consciousness, I prescribed a warm bed, some tea, and careful watching.  My orders were punctually obeyed; I then quitted the apartment of my patient, and began to ruminate over the hurried and singular events of the day.

I had scarcely had time to decide in my own mind on the respective merits of my two rival beauties when the surgeon arrived; and, being ushered into the sick-room, declared that the patient had been treated with skill, and that in all probability she owed her life to my presence of mind.  “But, give me leave to ask,” said the doctor, addressing the father, “how the accident happened?” The gentleman replied that a scoundrel having got up behind the carriage, had been flogged off by the postilion; and, in revenge, had thrown a stone, which knocked the driver off his horse:  they took fright, turned round, and ran away down the hill towards their own stables; and after running five miles, upset the carriage against a post, “by which accident,” said he, “my poor daughter was nearly killed.”

“What a villain!” said the doctor.

“Villain, indeed,” echoed I; and so I felt I was.  I turned sick at the thought of what my ungoverned passion had done; and my regret was not a little increased by the charms of my lovely victim; but I soon recovered from the shock, particularly when I saw that no suspicion attached to me.  I therefore received the praises of the father and the doctor with a becoming modest diffidence; and, with a hearty shake of the hand from the grateful parent, was wished a good night and retired to my bed.

As I stood before the looking-glass, laying my watch and exhausted purse on the dressing-table, and leisurely untying my cravat, I could not forbear a glance of approbation at what I thought a very handsome and a very impudent face:  I soliloquised on the events of the day, and, as usual, found the summing-up very much against me.  “This, then, sir,” said I, “is your road to repentance and reform.  You insult your father; quit his house; get up, like a vagabond, behind a gentleman’s carriage; are flogged off, break the ribs of an honest man, who has a wife and family to support out of his hard earnings—­are the occasion of a carriage being overturned, and very nearly cause the death of an amiable girl!  And all this mischief in the short space of six hours, not to say a word of your intentions towards the little actress, which I presume are none of the most honourable.  Where is all this to end?”

“At the gallows,” said I, in reply to myself,—­“the more probably, too, as my finances have no means of improvement, except by a miracle or highway robbery.  I am in love with two girls, and have only two clean shirts; consequently there is no proportion between the demand and the supply.”

With this medley of reflections I fell asleep.  I was awoke early by the swallows twittering at the windows; and the first question which was agitated in my brain was what account I should give of myself to the father of the young lady, when interrogated by him, as I most certainly should be.  I had my choice between truth and falsehood:  the latter (such is the force of habit), I think, carried it hollow; but I determined to leave that point to the spur of the moment, and act according to circumstances.