Reader, have you not elsewhere read in the mortal
fray between knights, when the casque has been beaten
off, the shield lost, and the sword shivered, how
they have resorted to closer and more deadly strife
with their daggers raised on high? Thus it was
with Timothy: his means had failed, and disdaining
any longer to wage a distant combat, he closed vigorously
with his panting enemy, overthrew him in the first
struggle, seizing from his basket the only weapons
which remained, one single vial, and one single box
of pills. As he sat upon his prostrate foe, first
he forced the box of pills into his gasping mouth,
and then with the lower end of the vial he drove it
down his throat, as a gunner rams home the wad and
shot into a thirty-two pound carronade. Choked
with the box, the fallen knight held up his hands
for quarter; but Timothy continued until the end of
the vial breaking out the top and bottom of the pasteboard
receptacle, forty-and-eight of antibilious pills rolled
in haste down Red-head’s throat. Timothy
then seized his basket, and amid the shouts of triumph,
walked away. His fallen-crested adversary coughed
up the remnants of the pasteboard, once more breathed,
and was led disconsolate to the neighbouring pump;
while Timothy regained our shop with his blushing
honours thick upon him.
But I must drop the vein heroical. Mr Cophagus,
who was at home when Timothy returned, was at first
very much inclined to be wroth at the loss of so much
medicine; but when he heard the story, and the finale,
he was so pleased at Tim’s double victory over
Mr Pleggit and his messenger, that he actually put
his hand in his pocket, and pulled out half-a-crown.
Mr Pleggit, on the contrary, was any thing but pleased;
he went to a lawyer, and commenced an action for assault
and battery, and all the neighbourhood did nothing
but talk about the affray which had taken place, and
the action at law which it was said would take place
in the ensuing term.
But with the exception of this fracas, which ended
in the action not holding good, whereby the animosity
was increased, I have little to recount during the
remainder of the time I served under Mr Cophagus.
I had been more than three years with him when my
confinement became insupportable. I had but one
idea, which performed an everlasting cycle in my brain—Who
was my father? And I should have abandoned the
profession to search the world in the hope of finding
my progenitor, had it not been that I was without
the means. Latterly, I had hoarded up all I could
collect; but the sum was small, much too small for
the proposed expedition. I became melancholy,
indifferent to the business, and slovenly in my appearance,
when a circumstance occurred which put an end to my
further dispensing medicines, and left me a free agent.
