MY

ADVENTURE

SHINGLETOWN.

I think it is Washington Irving who lays it down as an axiom that superstition enters into every man's composition. Now, with all respect for the great transatlantic's knowledge of his species, this proposition I beg humbly to deny. Up to the 1st of April, 1858, I was devoid of all superstition whatever. Understand me-superstition, not fear. There are certain things from which I have ever carefully abstained, owing to a smart appreciation of the consequences therefrom accruing. As a boy, for instance, I divided my school-fellows into two classes. First: those who could thrash me -second: those who couldn't. I never sauced the former. I never liked orchard-robbing; I preferred purchasing the fruit at a reduced rate from those who did. On breaking-up eve, when pillow-fights raged in the bed-rooms, I placed my countenance likewise beneath the clothes. In fact, I instinctively avoided everything that had the remotest chance of bringing me blows. The consequence was I passed through my curriculum without any experience of the cane, and each succeeding half obtained a prize, whose glory amply compensated for its being the only one I got the reward of good conduct.

Without entering into any further details details which might possibly be thought contemptible by those who do not understand my peculiar constitution - I would only add that this timidity, this fear of things actual, has accompanied me through life. But, as I before observed, with regard to things imaginary I have ever been bold as brass, and this by reason of sheer infidelity. I perfectly remember the day on which doubts of "Aladdin and his Lamp" entered my yet unbreeched understanding. I can trace minutely the progress of thought from this point to that on which I shocked the nursery by proclaiming my entire unbelief in its classics, from "Jack the Giant Killer" down to "Puss in Boots." Since then, tales of the wondrous and the wild have been my favourite provokatives of mirth. On a dull night, for instance, sitting up by myself and depressed in spirits, I wouldn't give a downright real ghost-story for the best things in "Joe Miller," or the most side-splitting facetiæ of the Family Herald. I have strolled comfortably through churchyards

at the hour when "graves give up their dead," and never saw anything whiter than an owl. I have slept luxuriously in a chamber across whose threshhold not one of the family would have stepped for love or money. I don't believe in ghosts.

That is, I didn't-till the 1st of April, 1858. On the 1st of April, 1858, I went down to Shingletown a sceptic and a scoffer. On the 2nd of April, 1858, I returned from Shingletown a sadder but a wiser man.

Shingletown is a falsehood; there is nothing of a town about it. A cleaner, snugger little hamlet, on a wilder, rockier coast cannot be found in our sea-girt isle. A pretty wide bay gives shelter from the storms of the German ocean, and terminates in a steep valley running up into the hills. A single street of thatched cottages stretches about half-a-mile up the valley-and this is Shingletown.

I had never been in Shingletown before, and need not now enlarge on the business which took me there then. Suffice it to say that the coach running on the coast road deposited me at the door of the "Jolly Trawlers" at half-past nine, a.m., and covenanted to take me up again at six, p.m. I had thus determined to stay in Shingletown nine-and-a-half hours-but l'homme propose, &c., &c.

Mr. Wutts was not at home. Mr. Wutts had left word with Mrs. Wutts that he would not be at home till to-morrow.

Now, I do not like the country; I rather hate it. One can knock about for a week in a provincial town if the theatre is open, the cricket ground good, and the society sufficiently snobbish to render it amusing to an on-looker. But Shingletown! ugh! A whole day to be passed in Shingletown a whole night in the "Jolly Trawlers!" I mentally wished sore ill to Mr. Wutts. It was very clear, however, that all the ill-wishing in the world wouldn't bring Mr. Wutts back in time for me to catch the six coach. It was palpable, too, that the further and more unpleasant the locality to which my angry feelings consigned him, the less chance was there of Mr. Wutts coming back at all. I had two days and a night before me in the wi!derness of Shingletown-how to spend them?

K

I began by refusing an invitation on the spot, voluntarily depriving myself of a source of excitement. I refused Mrs. Wutts's invitation to a farmer's dinner. I resisted the lady; I resisted the savoury perfume of the coming banquet. True, the former was of forbidding aspect, her grey eyes glaring over a beard and moustache far past the downy stage of infancy. But the latter-ah! Had it been the civic feast itself, however, I cannot dine at half-past twelve.

I therefore made my excuses, and giving the address of the " Jolly Trawlers," set off to investigate the larder of that hostel. No necessity exists here to describe the "Jolly Trawlers" further than by saying that it was a two-storied building with an ivied porch, an immense horsetrough, and a swinging sign, on which some Tinto of by-gone days had depicted three fishermen in an advanced state of intoxication. As I approached it, I tried vainly to conceive the landlord making his daily bread by the speculation. The edifice was full thirty miles from a railway station, and the diurnal profit accruing from the two stoppages of the coach might, I calculated, amount to eighteenpence. No one ever got down to stay at Shingletown. Old Jim (who held the horses' heads, and who was enveloped in what had once been an ostler's jacket) had looked faint and scared when I bade the coachman good-bye. There swung the sign in the sun and the sea-breeze; but nobody was there to look at it. The water in the trough slept still and placid, undisturbed by even the muzzle of a solitary cur. Yet, under these most disadvantageous circumstances, the "Jolly Trawlers" were, in the memory of the oldest inhabitant, coeval with Shingletown itself; and the buxom landlady met me at the door with such a smile in her bright eye, and such a general look of smartness about her, that I felt sure that if the "Jolly Trawlers" didn't get business in one way, it did in another.

Presently my misgivings were strengthened. I was astonished to find that I could get a firstrate dinner, the which I ordered to be on the table at four precisely. Now, I frankly own that if I have a weakness at all, it is a good dinner, and with the good dinner a pint of good port, neither more nor less. Whatever may be my state of mind, whatever crosses and vexations the morning may have brought, after such a dinner I view everything couleur de rose, and my bosom glows with charity to all men. When, therefore, the before-mentioned Jim removed the covers at four o'clock, I felt my vexation rapidly on the thaw, assisted, doubtless, by the beaming smiles of Mrs. Trawlers. The smiles emboldened me.

"Mrs. Trawlers," I said, with, I am afraid, a slight dash of hopeless scorn in my accents; "Mrs. Trawlers, have you a good glass of wine in the house?"

"Well, sir," she answered, not a bit put out, "we have some port; and it ought to be good, for a deal it cost."

"My good Madam, bring me a bottle immediately."

It was brought and decanted with the hand of a mistress. I tasted it; I finished the glass. I tasted and finished another. I tasted and finished a third. I set it down and looked at the landlady, who put in the stopper and looked at me. To the slight interrogative raising of my eyebrows a smile of intelligence was the response.

"This is.... Mrs. Trawlers?" I asked.

"Yes, sir, it is; and its vintage of '15, sir?" I decline stating how long that bottle lasted. The cloth being drawn, I settled myself comfortably in my easy chair, and pointing to the empty decanter, addressed Jim in these words:

Jim, another of the same."

"Aye, sure, this is wine," soliloquised Jim, decanting it with a tender and loving hand; and nodding mysteriously, "I reckon ee dunna git sich stuff as that Lunnon ways for nought ?” "Try a glass, Jim."

The rascal drained a mighty bumper, winked his eyes, nodded again, and left me to my reflections. Alas! for the fleeting nature of all mundane things! there are dregs even to a bottle of port of the vintage of '15! and those dregs I speedily became aware of. I don't smoke; most men at that juncture would have lighted a cigar. Shall I order another? No. It is a glorious spring evening; I feel the sharp sea-breeze through the ivied window; I'll take a walk and see Shingletown.

There was something to be got out of Shingletown after all. There was vintage of '15; there was incident and excitement; smuggling in the nineteenth century; perhaps every man in the place was a smuggler. As I strode over the cliffs, on which the sea-breeze blew strong and fresh, a sort of feeling came over me-half Will Watch, half Dirk Hatteraick. Countless stories flashed through my mind of deadly boat-fights by dark midnight, of runnels of brandy mysteriously left at trustworthy thresholds, of caves full of rum puncheons and powder barrels, with smugglers sitting pistol-in-hand ready to blow the place to shivers at a moment's notice. And, as if in consonance with my thoughts, at every step the scene grew wilder and wilder. Black boulders and masses of rock, round which the path wound with increased difficulty, shot up perpendicular, over-hanging. Past the sheltered point of the bay, too, the wind came in with a loud sonorous murmur; and the waves, dashing about their white manes, rattled in almost to my feet through the shiny sea-weed and tangle.

Lost in thought I wandered on and on, without taking any note of how the time was speeding. At length, coming to where a pretty wide fissure divided the path, it struck me, from the gloom, that it must be getting late, and pulling out my watch, I was astonished to find it already eight o'clock, and that I had come some miles from the town. That was not the worst, however. On turning my face homewards, the first thing I saw was a heavy bank of black cloud covering the whole easterly horizon. The wind, after a sort of suppressed sigh, fell in a moment. A strange whispering