thorough-going loyalists in the village than Richard Humphries. He was a sociable old man, fond of drink, who generally filled his own glass whenever called upon to replenish that of his customer. His house was the common thoroughfare of the travelling and the idle. The soldier, not on duty, found it a pleasant lounge; the tory, confident in the sympathies of the landlord, and solicitous of the good opinion of the ruling powers, made it his regular resort; and even the whig, compelled to keep down his patriotism, in order to keep up his credit, not unwisely sauntered about in the same wide hall with the enemy he feared and hated, but whom it was no part of his policy at the present moment to alarm or irritate. Humphries, from these helping circumstances, distanced all competition in the village. The opposition house was maintained by a suspected whig—one Pryor—who was avoided accordingly. Pryor was a sturdy citizen, who asked no favours; and if he did not avow himself in the language of defiance, at the same time scorned to take steps to conciliate patronage or do away with suspicion. He simply cocked his hat at the ancient customer, now passing to the other house; thrust his hands into the pockets of his breeches, and, with a manful resignation, growled through his teeth as he followed the deserter with his eye—"The white-livered skunk! He may go and be d—d."
This sort of philosophy was agreeable enough to Humphries, who, though profligate in some respects, was yet sufficiently worldly to have a close eye to the accumulation of his sixpences. His household was well served; for though himself a widower, his daughter Bella, a buxom, lively, coquettish, but gentle-natured creature, proved no common housekeeper. She was but a girl, however, but sixteen, and as she had long lacked the restraining presence of a matron, and possessed but little dignity herself, the house had its attractions for many, in the freedoms which the old man either did not or would not see, and which the girl herself was quite too young, too innocent, and perhaps too weak, often to find fault with. Her true protection, however, was in a brother not much older than herself, a fine manly fellow, and—though with the cautious policy of all around him suppressing his predilections for the time—a staunch partisan of American liberty.
