tidings, I suppose, that the chaise is ready."

It was no such thing--the tidings bore, that no chaise could be had that
evening, for Sir Peter Plyem had carried forward my landlord's two pairs
of horses that morning to the ancient royal borough of Bubbleburgh, to
look after his interest there. But as Bubbleburgh is only one of a set of
five boroughs which club their shares for a member of parliament, Sir
Peter's adversary had judiciously watched his departure, in order to
commence a canvass in the no less royal borough of Bitem, which, as all
the world knows, lies at the very termination of Sir Peter's avenue, and
has been held in leading-strings by him and his ancestors for time
immemorial. Now Sir Peter was thus placed in the situation of an
ambitious monarch, who, after having commenced a daring inroad into his
enemy's territories, is suddenly recalled by an invasion of his own
hereditary dominions. He was obliged in consequence to return from the
half-won borough of Bubbleburgh, to look after the half-lost borough of
Bitem, and the two pairs of horses which had carried him that morning to
Bubbleburgh were now forcibly detained to transport him, his agent, his
valet, his jester, and his hard-drinker, across the country to Bitem. The
cause of this detention, which to me was of as little consequence as it
may be to the reader, was important enough to my companions to reconcile
them to the delay. Like eagles, they smelled the battle afar off, ordered
a magnum of claret and beds at the Wallace, and entered at full career
into the Bubbleburgh and Bitem politics, with all the probable "Petitions
and complaints" to which they were likely to give rise.

In the midst of an anxious, animated, and, to me, most unintelligible
discussion, concerning provosts, bailies, deacons, sets of boroughs,
leets, town-clerks, burgesses resident and non-resident, all of a sudden
the lawyer recollected himself. "Poor Dunover, we must not forget him;"