“I lack no Zummerzett maid, mistress:  I have a fairer than your brown things; and for her alone would I strike a blow.”

At this the old woman gave me up, as being beyond correction:  and it vexed me a little that my great fame had not reached so far as Bridgwater, when I thought that it went to Bristowe.  But those people in East Somerset know nothing about wrestling.  Devon is the headquarters of the art; and Devon is the county of my chief love.  Howbeit, my vanity was moved, by this slur upon it—­for I had told her my name was John Ridd, when I had a gallon of ale with her, ere ever I came upstairs; and she had nodded, in such a manner, that I thought she knew both name and fame—­and here was I, not only shaken, pinched, and with many hairs pulled out, in the midst of my first good sleep for a week, but also abused, and taken amiss, and (which vexed me most of all) unknown.

Now there is nothing like vanity to keep a man awake at night, however he be weary; and most of all, when he believes that he is doing something great—­this time, if never done before—­yet other people will not see, except what they may laugh at; and so be far above him, and sleep themselves the happier.  Therefore their sleep robs his own; for all things play so, in and out (with the godly and ungodly ever moving in a balance, as they have done in my time, almost every year or two), all things have such nice reply of produce to the call for it, and such a spread across the world, giving here and taking there, yet on the whole pretty even, that haply sleep itself has but a certain stock, and keeps in hand, and sells to flattered (which can pay) that which flattened vanity cannot pay, and will not sue for.

Be that as it may, I was by this time wide awake, though much aggrieved at feeling so, and through the open window heard the distant roll of musketry, and the beating of drums, with a quick rub-a-dub, and the “come round the corner” of trumpet-call.  And perhaps Tom Faggus might be there, and shot at any moment, and my dear Annie left a poor widow, and my godson Jack an orphan, without a tooth to help him.

Therefore I reviled myself for all my heavy laziness; and partly through good honest will, and partly through the stings of pride, and yet a little perhaps by virtue of a young man’s love of riot, up I arose, and dressed myself, and woke Kickums (who was snoring), and set out to see the worst of it.  The sleepy hostler scratched his poll, and could not tell me which way to take; what odds to him who was King, or Pope, so long as he paid his way, and got a bit of bacon on Sunday?  And would I please to remember that I had roused him up at night, and the quality always made a point of paying four times over for a man’s loss of his beauty-sleep.  I replied that his loss of beauty-sleep was rather improving to a man of so high complexion; and that I, being none of the quality, must pay half-quality prices:  and so I gave him double fee, as became a good farmer; and he was glad to be quit of Kickums; as I saw by the turn of his eye, while going out at the archway.