CHAPTER VIII
It was no sooner day than Betty, entering our chamber, and perceiving our window open, cried out, "Odds-bobs! sure you Scotchmen must have hot constitutions to lie all night with the window open in such cold weather." I feigned to start out of sleep, and, withdrawing the curtain, called, "What's the matter?" When she showed me, I affected surprise, and said, "Bless me! the window was shut when we went to bed." "I'll be hanged, said she, "if Sawney Waddle, the pedlar, has not got up in a dream and done it, for I heard him very obstropulous in his sleep, Sure I put a chamberpot under his bed!
With these words she advanced to the bed, in which he lay, and, finding the sheets cold, exclaimed, "Good lackadaisy! The rogue is fled." "Fled," cried I, with feigned amazement, "God forbid! Sure he has not robbed us!" Then, springing up, I laid hold of my breeches, and emptied all my loose money into my hand; which having reckoned, I said, "Heaven be praised, our money is all safe! Strap, look to the knapsack." He did so, and found all was right. Upon which we asked, with seeming concern, if he had stolen nothing belonging to the house. "No, no," replied she, "he has stole nothing but his reckoning;" which, it seems, this pious pedlar had forgot to discharge in the midst of his devotion.
Betty, after a moment's pause withdrew, and immediately we could hear her waken Rifle, who no sooner heard of Waddle's flight than he jumped out of bed and dressed, venting a thousand execrations, and vowing to murder the pedlar if ever he should set eyes on him again: "For," said he "the scoundrel has by this time raised the hue and cry against me."
Having dressed himself in a hurry, he mounted his horse, and for that time rid us of his company and a thousand fears that were the consequence of it.
While we were at breakfast, Betty endeavoured, by all the cunning she was mistress of, to learn whether or no we suspected our fellow-lodger, whom we saw take horse; but, as we were on our guard, we answered her sly questions with a simplicity she could not distrust; when, all of a sudden, we heard the trampling of a horse's feet at the door. This noise alarmed Strap so much, whose imagination was wholly engrossed by the image of Rifle, that, with a countenance as pale as milk, he cried, "O Lord! there is the highwayman returned!"
Our landlady, staring at these words, said, "What highwayman, young man? Do you think any highwaymen harbour here?"
Though I was very much disconcerted at this piece of indiscretion in Strap, I had presence of mind enough to tell her we had met a horseman the day before, whom Strap had foolishly supposed to be a highwayman, because he rode with pistols; and that he had been terrified at the sound of a horse's feet ever since.
She forced a smile at the ignorance and timidity of my comrade; but I could perceive, not without great concern, that this account was not at all satisfactory to her.