Vol.1 f.005 recto

neither a summer nor an autumn one, but the twilight of a
day at the ?????? of ???toward the close of in March,
when the wind howled dismally among the bare branches of
the trees, and rumbling in the wide chimnies and driving the
rain against the windows of the Maypole Inn, gave such of
its frequenters as chanced to be there at the moment an undeniable excellent
excuse reason for prolonging their stay, and caused the landlord to
prophecy that it would the night would certainly clear at
eleven o'clock precisely; - which by a remarkable coincidence was
????? was his hour of closing house the hour at which he
always closed his house.
The name of the ??? him upon whom the spirit of
prophecy thus descended after this fashion was Peter Rudge John Willet, a
fat, burly, heavy large-headed fellow man with a ??? fat face which
betokened ??? some profound obstinacy and slowness of apprehension, combined
with a very strong reliance upon his own merits. It was mr
Rudge's John Willet's custom to remark ordinary boast in his more placid moods that if
he was slow, he was sure; a ??? which assertion which could, in one
sense at least could be by no means gainsaid, seeing that
he was undeniably slow in everything unquestionably the reverse of fast, and withal one of the most dogged
and positive fellows in existence -- always sure that what
he thought or said or did was right, and thatholding it
as a thing quite settled ?? and ordained by the laws of
nature and Providence that anybody who said or did or thought otherwise
must be inevitably and of necessity wrong.