The door was opened by one of the maid-servants, and John Brown, with his fine flaming physiognomy, strode manfully into the hall. The girl, with the open door still in her hand, stared after him with surprise.--"Shut the door, young woman!" said the peremptory John Brown, "shut the door, young woman, and show me up to the _missis_." "My mistress, Sir!" said the astonished girl;--"it's impossible--she is not up." "Aye, that won't do for me," replied John Brown, "I must, and I will see her directly--so show me up stairs!" The girl became alarmed, and called her fellow-servant; whilst John Brown continued marching about the hall, wiping the dewy moisture from his blushing brows, and vociferating aloud, "You baggages! you know all about it! But I won't be gammoned!--you know the _missis_ is in bed with Lieutenant H.! But I'll have him out in spite of you!"
At length the two girls together prevailed upon him to moderate his choler a little, and write a note to their mistress. They furnished him with pen, ink, and paper, and he set about it lustily; but he wrote and wrote, and could write nothing to his mind. He threw his coat off, and tried again; but still it would not do. Then he recollected that he had been bled the day before, and that the bandage might possibly impede the flow of his thoughts as well as the motion of his pen. Up goes his shirt sleeve in an instant; and stretching out his brawny arm, he ordered the girls to unloose the bandage; but by this time they had no doubt that honest John Brown was neither more nor less than a madman, and one of them slipped out of door and requested Mr. N., the churchwarden, who resided immediately opposite, to come to him. The churchwarden came, just as John Brown had managed to unroll the bandage from his arm himself, and was taking pen in hand to have another try at writing. He demanded John Brown's business there, and John Brown told him all about it without bating an inch. When he had done, the churchwarden told him he was either mad, or was labouring under some gross mistake. John Brown was doubly fired at this--his countenance, from a glowing red, became of a mahogany tint, and he manifested symptoms of kicking up a row. But the churchwarden was not to be frightened by "the blustering of a _turkey-cock_;" and so, quietly grasping John Brown by the arm, he "_walked_ him out of the house;" and walked him, and walked him along the street, till he had walked him into the office of the lady's solicitor, in order that he might be dealt with according to law for his strange intrusion into her house. But the solicitor happened to be from home, and John Brown was suffered to go at large; whereupon he repaired to the nearest tavern, took a bumper of brandy and water to reconglomerate his faculties, and then applied at this office for a warrant against the churchwarden,--who, as he said, had dared to walk him out of one house into another.