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shall come off.

I think I shall stay with you for four-and-twenty hours at least; I have been rather melancholy of late, and cannot afford to part with a friend like you at the present moment: it is an unexpected piece of good fortune to have met you; and I have not been very fortunate of late," he added, sighing.
"Well," said I, "I am glad to see you once more, whether fortunate or not; where is your baggage ?" "Yon trunk is mine," said Francis, pointing to a trunk of black Russian leather upon the coach.
"We will soon have it down," said I, and at a word which I gave to one of the hangers-on of the inn, the trunk was taken from the top of the coach.
"Now," said I to Francis Ardry, "follow me, I am a person of some authority in this house;" thereupon I led Francis Ardry into the house, and a word which I said to a waiter forthwith installed Francis Ardry in a comfortable private sitting-room, and his trunk in the very best sleeping-room of our extensive establishment.
It was now about one o'clock: Francis Ardry ordered dinner for two, to be ready at four, and a pint of sherry to be brought forthwith, which I requested my friend the waiter might be the very best, and which in effect turned out as I requested; we sat down, and when we had drank to each other's health, Frank requested me to make known to him how I had contrived to free myself from my embarrassments in London, what I had been about since I quitted that city, and the present posture of my affairs.
I related to Francis Ardry how I had composed the Life of Joseph Sell, and how the sale of it to the bookseller had enabled me to quit London with money in my pocket, which had supported me during a long course of ramble in the country, into the particulars of which I, however, did not enter with any considerable degree of fulness.

I summed up my account by saying that "I was at present a kind of overlooker in the stables of the inn, had still some pounds in my purse, and, moreover, a capital horse in the stall." "No very agreeable posture of affairs," said Francis Ardry, looking rather seriously at me.
"I make no complaints," said I; "my prospects are not very bright, it is true, but sometimes I have visions, both waking and sleeping, which, though always strange, are invariably agreeable.