CHAPTER XXXVI

Give me 'a cup of sack, to make mine eyes look red—For I must speak in passion, and I will do it in King Cambyses’ vein. Henry IV., Part I.
MANNERING, with Sampson for his companion, lost no time in his journey to Edinburgh. They travelled in the Colonel’s post-chariot, who, knowing his companion’s habits of abstrac- tion, did not choose to lose him out of his own sight, far less to trust him on horseback, where, in all probability, a knavish stable-boy might with little address have contrived to mount him with his face to the tail. Accordingly, with the aid of his valet, who attended on horseback, he contrived to bring
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Mr. Sampson safe to an inn in Edinburgh,—for hotels in those days there were none,—without any other accident than arose from his straying twice upon the road. On one occasion he was recovered by Barnes, who understood his humour, when, after engaging in close colloquy with the schoolmaster of Moffat, respecting a disputed quantity in Horace’s 7th Ode,