The inn found, he ordered his meal and informed the landlady of his intention.
"Why, do 'ee stop here till mornin', then," exclaimed the large-hearted Cornish woman. "If 'tis the matter o' the money," she added, eying him critically, "that's hinderin' 'ee from it, it needn't to, for I'll see us don't have no quarrel 'bout the price o' the bed."
Reuben assured her that choice, not necessity, impelled his onward footsteps; and, thus satisfied, she bade him "Take and lie down on the settle there inside the bar-parlor; for," she added, "'less 'tis the sergeant over fra Liskeard 'tain't likely you'll be disturbed no ways; and I shall be in and out to see you'm all right."
Reuben stretched himself out, and, overcome by the excitement and fatigue of the day, was soon asleep and dreaming of those happier times when he and Eve had walked as friends together. Suddenly some one seemed to speak her name, and though the name at once wove itself into the movement of the dream, the external sound had aroused the sleeper, and he opened his eyes to see three men sitting near talking over their grog.
With just enough consciousness to allow of his noticing that one was a soldier and the other two were sailors, Reuben looked for a minute, then closed his eyes, and was again sinking back into sleep when the name of Eve was repeated, and this time with such effect that all Reuben's senses seemed to quicken into life, and, cautiously opening his eyes, so as to look without being observed, he saw that it was the soldier who was speaking.
"Young chap, thinks I," he was saying, "you little fancy there's one so near who's got your sweetheart's seal dangling to his fob;" and with an air of self-satisfied vanity he held out for inspection a curious little seal which Reuben at once recognized as the same which he himself had given to Eve.
The unexpected sight came upon him with such surprise that, had not the height of the little table served as a screen to shelter him from view, his sudden movement must have betrayed his wakefulness.
"He's a nice one for any woman to be tied to, he is!" replied the younger of the two sailors. "Why, the only time as I ever had what you may call a fair look at un was one night in to the King o' Proosia's, and there he was dealing out his soft sawder to little Nancy Lagassick as if he couldn't live a minute out o' her sight."