Where’s the jolly host

You told me of? ‘T has been my custom ever

To parley¹ with mine host.

Lover’s Progress.

Morton reached the borough² town without meeting with any remarkable³ adventure, and alighted at the little inn. It had occurred to him more than once, while upon his journey, that his resumption of the dress which he had worn while a youth, although favourable⁴ to his views in other respects, might render it more difficult for him to remain incognito⁵. But a few years of campaigns and wandering had so changed his appearance that he had great confidence that in the grown man, whose brows exhibited the traces of resolution and considerate thought, none would recognise the raw and bashful stripling who won the game of the popinjay. The only chance was that here and there some Whig, whom he had led to battle, might remember the Captain of the Milnwood Marksmen; but the risk, if there was any, could not be guarded against.

The Howff seemed full and frequented as if possessed⁶ of all its old celebrity⁷. The person and demeanour of Niel Blane, more fat and less civil than of yore, intimated that he had increased as well in purse as in corpulence; for in Scotland a landlord’s complaisance⁸ for his guests decreases in exact proportion to his rise in the world. His daughter had acquired the air of a dexterous⁹ barmaid, undisturbed by the circumstances of love and war, so apt to perplex her in the exercise of her vocation¹⁰. Both showed Morton the degree of attention which could have been expected by a stranger travelling without attendants, at a time when they were particularly the badges of distinction. He took upon himself exactly the character his appearance presented, went to the stable and saw his horse accommodated, then returned to the house, and seating himself in the public room (for to request one to himself would, in those days, have been thought an overweening degree of conceit), he found himself in the very apartment in which he had some years before

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