Eighty-five items began thus: "Attending you at your house for
several hours, on which occasion you asked my advice as to whether--"
etc.
Now as a great many of these attendances had been really to shoot game
and dine on rabbits at Bassett's expense, he thought it hard the
conversation should be charged and the rabbits not.
Disgusted with his defeat, and resolved to evade this bill, he
discharged his servant, and put a retired soldier into his house, armed
him with a blunderbuss, and ordered him to keep all doors closed, and
present the weapon aforesaid at all rate collectors, tax collectors,
debt collectors, and applicants for money to build churches or convert
the heathen; but not to _fire_ at anybody except his friend Wheeler,
nor at him unless he should try to shove a writ in at some chink of the
building.
This done, he went on his travels, third-class, with his eyes always
open, and his heart full of bitterness.
Nothing happened to Richard Bassett on his travels that I need relate
until one evening when he alighted at a small commercial inn in the
city of York, and there met a person whose influence on the events I am
about to relate seems at this moment incredible to me, though it is
simple fact.
He found the commercial room empty, and rang the bell.
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