This left the Major and myself alone at the table.  You must not suppose our tete-a-tete was long, but it was a lively period while it lasted.  He drank like a fish or an Englishman; shouted, beat the table, roared out songs, quarrelled, made it up again, and at last tried to throw the dinner-plates through the window, a feat of which he was at that time quite incapable.  For a party of fugitives, condemned to the most rigorous discretion, there was never seen so noisy a carnival; and through it all the Colonel continued to sleep like a child.  Seeing the Major so well advanced, and no retreat possible, I made a fair wind of a foul one, keeping his glass full, pushing him with toasts; and sooner than I could have dared to hope, he became drowsy and incoherent.  With the wrong-headedness of all such sots, he would not be persuaded to lie down upon one of the mattresses until I had stretched myself upon another.  But the comedy was soon over; soon he slept the sleep of the just, and snored like a military music; and I might get up again and face (as best I could) the excessive tedium of the afternoon.

I had passed the night before in a good bed; I was denied the resource of slumber; and there was nothing open for me but to pace the apartment, maintain the fire, and brood on my position.  I compared yesterday and to-day—­the safety, comfort, jollity, open-air exercise and pleasant roadside inns of the one, with the tedium, anxiety, and discomfort of the other.  I remembered that I was in the hands of Fenn, who could not be more false—­though he might be more vindictive—­than I fancied him.  I looked forward to nights of pitching in the covered cart, and days of monotony in I knew not what hiding-places; and my heart failed me, and I was in two minds whether to slink off ere it was too late, and return to my former solitary way of travel.  But the Colonel stood in the path.  I had not seen much of him; but already I judged him a man of a childlike nature—­with that sort of innocence and courtesy that, I think, is only to be found in old soldiers or old priests—­ and broken with years and sorrow.  I could not turn my back on his distress; could not leave him alone with the selfish trooper who snored on the next mattress.  ‘Champdivers, my lad, your health!’ said a voice in my ear, and stopped me—­and there are few things I am more glad of in the retrospect than that it did.

It must have been about four in the afternoon—­at least the rain had taken off, and the sun was setting with some wintry pomp—­when the current of my reflections was effectually changed by the arrival of two visitors in a gig.  They were farmers of the neighbourhood, I suppose—­big, burly fellows in great-coats and top-boots, mightily flushed with liquor when they arrived, and, before they left, inimitably drunk.  They stayed long in the kitchen with Burchell, drinking, shouting, singing, and keeping it up; and the sound of their merry minstrelsy kept