‘We shall go out to supper, you incorrigible female!’ I vowed, between laughter and tears.  ’Here—­this is going to end!  I want you for a landlady—­let me tell you that!—­and I am going to have my way.  You won’t tell me what you charge?  Very well; I will do without!  I can trust you!  You don’t seem to know when you have a good lodger; but I know perfectly when I have an honest landlady!  Rowley, unstrap the valises!’

Will it be credited?  The monomaniac fell to rating me for my indiscretion!  But the battle was over; these were her last guns, and more in the nature of a salute than of renewed hostilities.  And presently she condescended on very moderate terms, and Rowley and I were able to escape in quest of supper.  Much time had, however, been lost; the sun was long down, the lamps glimmered along the streets, and the voice of a watchman already resounded in the neighbouring Leith Road.  On our first arrival I had observed a place of entertainment not far off, in a street behind the Register House.  Thither we found our way, and sat down to a late dinner alone.  But we had scarce given our orders before the door opened, and a tall young fellow entered with something of a lurch, looked about him, and approached the same table.

‘Give you good evening, most grave and reverend seniors!’ said he.  ’Will you permit a wanderer, a pilgrim—­the pilgrim of love, in short—­to come to temporary anchor under your lee?  I care not who knows it, but I have a passionate aversion from the bestial practice of solitary feeding!’

‘You are welcome, sir,’ said I, ’if I may take upon me so far to play the host in a public place.’

He looked startled, and fixed a hazy eye on me, as he sat down.

‘Sir,’ said he, ’you are a man not without some tincture of letters, I perceive!  What shall we drink, sir?’

I mentioned I had already called for a pot of porter.

‘A modest pot—­the seasonable quencher?’ said he.  ’Well, I do not know but what I could look at a modest pot myself!  I am, for the moment, in precarious health.  Much study hath heated my brain, much walking wearied my—­well, it seems to be more my eyes!’

‘You have walked far, I dare say?’ I suggested.

‘Not so much far as often,’ he replied.  ’There is in this city—­to which, I think, you are a stranger?  Sir, to your very good health and our better acquaintance!—­there is, in this city of Dunedin, a certain implication of streets which reflects the utmost credit on the designer and the publicans—­at every hundred yards is seated the Judicious Tavern, so that persons of contemplative mind are secure, at moderate distances, of refreshment.  I have been doing a trot in that favoured quarter, favoured by art and nature.  A few chosen comrades—­enemies of publicity and friends to wit and wine—­ obliged me with their society.  “Along the cool, sequestered vale of Register Street we kept the uneven tenor of our way,” sir.’