A CALM COMING ON. 379 



He was to be exposed, prosecuted to the utmost 

 rigour of the law, thrashed ; (only some doubts arose 

 on the practicability of this latter mode of vengeance ;) 

 but in his own vard he should be convicted before all 

 present : in short, God knows what was not to be done. 

 But, ah, what simple circumstances often turn aside 

 the greatest resolves ! Up came the smoking horses 

 to Nickem's gate, out jumped the gentleman, swelled 

 by the pent-up passions he prepared to give vent to. 

 There stood the supposed convicted felon, but with 

 no apparent conscious feelings of fear or repentance 

 in his countenance, no downcast look, no visible 

 trepidation of manner : he saw the gentleman coming : 

 the bland and seeming honest smile of Nickem, 

 thouo-h it made no difference in his irate customer's 

 resolves, lowered the heat of his passion from 110 

 degrees to 50 of Fahrenheit : so he spake temperately. 

 " Pray, Mr. Nickem, how do you account for your 

 conduct respecting my horse ? " — Nickem : " In what 

 way, Sir?" — Seller: "Why, I met the gentleman 

 this day who bought, and gave eighty guineas for 

 him, when as you know you told me you sold him at 

 fifty-eight." — Nick: "I don't wonder at your being 

 angry, Sir, at all; I have been out of humour with 

 myself ever since I sold him : I sold him to as great 

 a vagabond as any in to^vn ; and you might just as 

 well, and much better, have had the eighty guineas 

 than he : but you shall see 1 am not to blame. Mr. 

 Meddler," says Nickem (addressing the latter, who I 

 need not say was always as much at hand as Nickem's 

 whip), " do you happen to have the receipt about you 

 that you took for the chestnut horse?" — "I don't 

 know, I am sure," says Meddler : " if I havn't, I have 

 it at home." His well-used pocket-book comes out. 



