With everything in proper trim, Bunce stood at the entrance of his lodge, ready to receive them.  The preliminaries were soon despatched, and we behold them accordingly, all four, comfortably seated around a huge oaken table in the centre of the apartment.  There was the jug, and there the glasses—­the sugar, the peppermint, the nutmegs—­the pipes and tobacco—­all convenient, and sufficiently tempting for the unscrupulous.  The pedler did the honors with no little skill, and Tongs plunged headlong into the debauch.  The whiskey was never better, and found, for this reason, anything but security where it stood.  Glass after glass, emptied only to be replenished, attested the industrious hospitality of the host, not less than its own excellence.  Tongs, averaging three draughts to one of his companion’s, was soon fairly under way in his progress to that state of mental self-glorification in which the world ceases to have vicissitudes, and the animal realizes the abstractions of an ancient philosophy, and denies all pain to life.

Brooks, however, though not averse to the overcoming element, had more of that vulgar quality of prudence than his brother-in-law, and far more than was thought amiable in the opinion of the pedler.  For some time, therefore, he drank with measured scrupulousness; and it was with no small degree of anxiety that Bunce plied him with the bottle—­complaining of his unsociableness, and watching, with the intensity of any other experimentalist, the progress of his scheme upon him.  As for the lad—­the younger Brooks—­it was soon evident that, once permitted, and even encouraged to drink, as he had been, by his superiors, he would not, after a little while, give much if any inconvenience to the conspirators.  The design of the pedler was considerably advanced by Tongs, who, once intoxicated himself, was not slow in the endeavor to bring all around him under the same influence.

“Drink, Brooks—­drink, old fellow,” he exclaimed; “as you are a true man, drink, and don’t fight shy of the critter!  Whiskey, my boy—­old Monongahely like this, I say—­whiskey is wife and children—­house and horse—­lands and niggers—­liberty and [hiccup] plenty to live on!  Don’t you see how I drive ahead, and don’t care for the hind wheels?  It’s all owing to whiskey!  Grog, I say—­Hark ye, Mr. Pedler—­grog, I say, is the wheels of life:  it carries a man for’ad.  Why don’t men go for’ad in the world?  What’s the reason now?  I’ll tell you.  They’re afeared.  Well, now, who’s afeared when he’s got a broadside of whiskey in him?  Nobody—­nobody’s afeared but you—­you, Ben Brooks, you’re a d——­d crick—­crick—­you’re always afeared of something, or nothing; for, after all, whenever you’re afeared of something, it turns out to be nothing!  All ’cause you don’t drink like a man.  That’s his cha-cha-rack-ter, Mr. Bunce; and it’s all owing ’cause he won’t drink!”