h that on my shoulder, and a strong
staff in my hand, I set off towards the great city at as brisk a pace as
if I were only bound to the next village. Accordingly, about noon I was
both tired and hungry; and seeing by the wayside one of those pretty
inns yet peculiar to England, but which, thanks to the railways, will
soon be amongst the things before the Flood, I sat down at a table under
some clipped limes, unbuckled my knapsack, and ordered my simple fare
with the dignity of one who, for the first time in his life, bespeaks
his own dinner and pays for it out of his own pocket.

While engaged on a rasher of bacon and a tankard of what the landlord
called "No mistake," two pedestrians, passing the same road which I
had traversed, paused, cast a simultaneous look at my occupation, and
induced no doubt by its allurements, seated themselves under the same
lime-trees, though at the farther end of the table. I surveyed the
new-comers with the curiosity natural to my years.

The elder of the two might have attained the age of thirty, though
sundry deep lines, and hues formerly florid and now faded, speaking of
fatigue, care, or dissipation, might have made him look somewhat older
than he was. There was nothing very prepossessing in his appearance. He
was dressed with a pretension ill suited to the costume appropriate to
a foot-traveller. His coat was pinched and padded; two enormous pins,
connected by a chain, decorated a very stiff stock of blue satin dotted
with yellow stars; his hands were cased in very dingy gloves which had
once been straw-colored, and the said hands played with a whalebone
cane surmounted by a formidable knob, which gave it the appearance of
a "life-pre server." As he took off a white napless hat, which he
wiped with great care and affection with the sleeve of his right arm,
a profusion of stiff curls instantly betrayed the art of man. Like
my landlord's ale, in that wig there was "no mistake;" it was brought
(after the fashion of the wigs we see in the popular effigies of George
IV. in his youth), low over his fore-head, and was raised at the top.
The wig had been oiled, and the oil had imbibed no small quantity of
dust; oil and dust had alike left their impression on the forehead and
cheeks of the wig's proprietor. For the rest, the expression of his face
was somewhat impudent and reckless, but not without a certain drollery
in the corners of his eyes.

The younger man was apparently about my own a