The Trotter. 141 



monotony of the respectable life he was then leading, or whether 

 he became weary of a submission which was yielded to him without 

 an effort to gain it, it is hard to say, but he gradually grew restless 

 and uneasy -, and although it was very rarely now that any of his 

 old associates came home to him, he by degrees got into the habit 

 of meeting them at neighbouring public-houses and taverns, till at 

 length he scarcely passed at home, in his wife's company, one 

 evening out of the seven. The poor woman saw the change, but 

 she never repined. She had now other cares and anxieties to 

 contend against. They had no children until five years after their 

 marriage, when a little son was born. The poor child was sickly 

 from its cradle, and by degrees sank into a helpless idiot. One 

 would have thought that such an affliction would have bound any 

 father closer to a wife, whose fondest earthly hopes were thus 

 rudely dashed away ; but it had a contrary effect on Sam. He 

 loathed the very sight of that child, and as for the poor mother who 

 bore it, he appeared to regard her as the sole cause of the calamity. 

 He now seemed to shun a home into which she had brought the 

 only ray of pure sunshine which had entered it for years, and he 

 took again to drinking deeply a vice which for some time he had 

 abandoned. " Cuss them bad shillin's," says Sam Slick, "they are 

 always coming back to you;" and now, as his poor wife, whose 

 spirits were gradually becoming broken, was nearly always confined 

 to her room in charge of her idiot boy, and was rarely seen by any 

 one, his old acquaintances one by one returned j and on the night 

 when I had my first spin with Morgan Rattler on the turnpike-road, 

 Sam West, though past the age of fifty, was a wilder and more 

 reckless man than ever, without the excuse of youth to palliate his 

 excesses. 



Such was the history of Sam West and Morgan Rattler j and 1 

 only hope I have not tired out the reader, for I have got a little 

 more to say about both of them yet. 



On reaching home, after the chance contest between my new 

 mare and Sam West's well-known favourite, I told my groom Jem 

 of my little adventure. Now this groom had lived at Ashby Grange 



