The echoes of the mountains were engaged in saying to me privately:  ‘You fool, you have done it now!’

’They do seem to have got ‘old of your name, Mr. Anne,’ said Rowley.  ‘It weren’t my fault this time.’

‘It was one of those accidents that can never be foreseen,’ said I, affecting a dignity that I was far from feeling.  ’Some one recognised me.’

’Which on ’em, Mr. Anne?’ said the rascal.

’That is a senseless question; it can make no difference who it was,’ I returned.

‘No, nor that it can’t!’ cried Rowley.  ’I say, Mr. Anne, sir, it’s what you would call a jolly mess, ain’t it? looks like “clean bowled-out in the middle stump,” don’t it?’

‘I fail to understand you, Rowley.’

‘Well, what I mean is, what are we to do about this one?’ pointing to the postillion in front of us, as he alternately hid and revealed his patched breeches to the trot of his horse.  ’He see you get in this morning under Mr. Ramornie—­I was very piticular to Mr. Ramornie you, if you remember, sir—­and he see you get in again under Mr. Saint Eaves, and whatever’s he going to see you get out under? that’s what worries me, sir.  It don’t seem to me like as if the position was what you call stratetegic!’

‘Parrrbleu! will you let me be!’ I cried.  ’I have to think; you cannot imagine how your constant idiotic prattle annoys me.’

‘Beg pardon, Mr. Anne,’ said he; and the next moment, ’You wouldn’t like for us to do our French now, would you, Mr. Anne?’

‘Certainly not,’ said I.  ‘Play upon your flageolet.’

The which he did with what seemed to me to be irony.

Conscience doth make cowards of us all!  I was so downcast by my pitiful mismanagement of the morning’s business that I shrank from the eye of my own hired infant, and read offensive meanings into his idle tootling.

I took off my coat, and set to mending it, soldier-fashion, with a needle and thread.  There is nothing more conducive to thought, above all in arduous circumstances; and as I sewed, I gradually gained a clearness upon my affairs.  I must be done with the claret-coloured chaise at once.  It should be sold at the next stage for what it would bring.  Rowley and I must take back to the road on our four feet, and after a decent interval of trudging, get places on some coach for Edinburgh again under new names!  So much trouble and toil, so much extra risk and expense and loss of time, and all for a slip of the tongue to a little lady in blue!

CHAPTER XXIV—­THE INN-KEEPER OF KIRKBY-LONSDALE