In crossing these treacherous Syrtes with a guide, we perceived a
drowned horse, which Humphry Clinker, after due inspection,
declared to be the very identical beast which Mr Lismahago rode
when he parted with us at Feltonbridge in Northumberland. This
information, which seemed to intimate that our friend the
lieutenant had shared the fate of his horse, affected us all, and
above all our aunt Tabitha, who shed salt tears, and obliged
Clinker to pull a few hairs out of the dead horse's tail, to be
worn in a ring as a remembrance of his master: but her grief and
ours was not of long duration; for one of the first persons we
saw in Carlisle, was the lieutenant in propria persona,
bargaining with a horse-dealer for another steed, in the yard of
the inn where we alighted. -- Mrs Bramble was the first that
perceived him, and screamed as if she had seen a ghost; and,
truly, at a proper time and place, he might very well have passed
for an inhabitant of another world; for he was more meagre and
grim than before. -- We received him the more cordially for having
supposed he had been drowned; and he was not deficient in
expressions of satisfaction at this meeting.
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