Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/256

220 WILLIAM BLA CKWO OD. the Vandalism they had committed in the town, they drove on to Windermere, and put up at the Ferry Hotel. Here they stayed for nearly four days, dis- porting themselves like Yahoos. Wilson, as is well known, was " Admiral of the Windermere Fleet," and chanced, while they were in the neighbourhood, to hold a regatta, giving his friends a tea at Ullock's Hotel, Bowness, when the amusements of the day were over. Hither the travelling adventurers came by water ; at the landing stage, however, one of the number, seeing a fisherman washing his nets in the lake, crept behind him, and with a shove and a hoarse laugh sent him into the water. Westmoreland blood is not easily cooled, and the peasant, seizing his attacker, ducked him within an inch of his life. Nothing daunted the other three proceeded to the hotel, and entered a room where tea was laid out for a large party ; to knock the tray over, to pull the cloth off, to dance upon the tea-pot till it was flattened, and the crockery till it was smashed into a thousand smithereens, was, of course, only the work of an instant. Hearing the clatter, Mrs. Wilson hurried downstairs, and Lord M- r, mistaking her for the landlady, seized her by the neck, and tried to ravish a kiss. At this cri- tical moment the Professor entered one blow "from the shoulder" laid the noble lord at his feet; then, like a genuine old heathen warrior, placing one foot upon the neck of the prostrate wretch " if you other two scoundrels are not out of this room in an instant, I'll squeeze the man's breath out of his body." They heard and fled. Wilson, in a fury of excite- ment, took boat to Belle Isle, and urged Mr. Curwen to act as his friend, Mr, Curwen represented that