‘Why, no, sir,’ said I.  ‘A little Spanish at your service.’

‘But you know the French accent, perhaps?’ said the clerk.

‘Well do I do that!’ said I.  ’The French accent?  Why, I believe I can tell a Frenchman in ten words.’

‘Here is a puzzle for you, then!’ he said.  ’I have no material doubt myself, but some of these gentlemen are more backward.  The lack of education, you know.  I make bold to say that a man cannot walk, cannot hear, and cannot see, without the blessings of education.’

He turned to the Major, whose food plainly stuck in his throat.

‘Now, sir,’ pursued the clerk, ’let me have the pleasure to hear your voice again.  Where are you going, did you say?’

‘Sare, I am go-ing to Lon-don,’ said the Major.

I could have flung my plate at him to be such an ass, and to have so little a gift of languages where that was the essential.

‘What think ye of that?’ said the clerk.  ‘Is that French enough?’

‘Good God!’ cried I, leaping up like one who should suddenly perceive an acquaintance, ’is this you, Mr. Dubois?  Why, who would have dreamed of encountering you so far from home?’ As I spoke, I shook hands with the Major heartily; and turning to our tormentor, ’Oh, sir, you may be perfectly reassured!  This is a very honest fellow, a late neighbour of mine in the city of Carlisle.’

I thought the attorney looked put out; I little knew the man!

‘But he is French,’ said he, ‘for all that?’

‘Ay, to be sure!’ said I.  ’A Frenchman of the emigration!  None of your Buonaparte lot.  I will warrant his views of politics to be as sound as your own.’

‘What is a little strange,’ said the clerk quietly, ’is that Mr. Dubois should deny it.’

I got it fair in the face, and took it smiling; but the shock was rude, and in the course of the next words I contrived to do what I have rarely done, and make a slip in my English.  I kept my liberty and life by my proficiency all these months, and for once that I failed, it is not to be supposed that I would make a public exhibition of the details.  Enough, that it was a very little error, and one that might have passed ninety-nine times in a hundred.  But my limb of the law was as swift to pick it up as though he had been by trade a master of languages.

‘Aha!’ cries he; ’and you are French, too!  Your tongue bewrays you.  Two Frenchmen coming into an alehouse, severally and accidentally, not knowing each other, at ten of the clock at night, in the middle of Bedfordshire?  No, sir, that shall not pass!  You are all prisoners escaping, if you are nothing worse.  Consider yourselves under arrest.  I have to trouble you for your papers.’

‘Where is your warrant, if you come to that?’ said I.  ’My papers!  A likely thing that I would show my papers on the ipse dixit of an unknown fellow in a hedge alehouse!’