ked to the end of the platform, side by side, in silence.

"There are people like that," he broke out, as we turned, "people who
will go about, giving advice. I'll be getting six months over one of
them, I'm always afraid. I remember a pony I had once." (I judged the
man to be a small farmer; he talked in a wurzelly tone. I don't know if
you understand what I mean, but an atmosphere of wurzels was the thing
that somehow he suggested.) "It was a thoroughbred Welsh pony, as sound
a little beast as ever stepped. I'd had him out to grass all the winter,
and one day in the early spring I thought I'd take him for a run. I had
to go to Amersham on business. I put him into the cart, and drove him
across; it is just ten miles from my place. He was a bit uppish, and had
lathered himself pretty freely by the time we reached the town.

"A man was at the door of the hotel. He says, 'That's a good pony of
yours.'

"'Pretty middling,' I says.

"'It doesn't do to over-drive 'em, when they're young,' he says.

"I says, 'He's done ten miles, and I've done most of the pulling. I
reckon I'm a jolly sight more exhausted than he is.

"I went inside and did my business, and when I came out the man was
still there. 'Going back up the hill?' he says to me.

"Somehow, I didn't cotton to him from the beginning. 'Well, I've got to
get the other side of it,' I says, 'and unless you know any patent way
of getting over a hill without going up it, I reckon I am.'

"He says, 'You take my advice: give him a pint of old ale before you
start.'

"'Old ale,' I says; 'why he's a teetotaler.'

"'Never you mind that,' he answers; 'you give him a pint of old ale. I
know these ponies; he's a good 'un, but he ain't set. A pint of old
ale, and he'll take you up that hill like a cable tramway, and not hurt
himself.'

"I don't know what it is about this class of man. One asks oneself
afterwards why one didn't knock his hat over his eyes and run his head
into the nearest horse-trough. But at the time one listens to them.
I got a pint of old ale in a hand-bowl, and brought it out. About
half-a-dozen chaps were standing round, and of course there was a good
deal of chaff.

"'You're starting him on the downward course, Jim,' says one of them.
'He'll take to gambling, rob a bank, and murder his mother. That's
always the result of a glass of ale, 'cording to the tracts.'

"'He won't drink it like that,' says another; 'it's as flat as ditch
water. Put a hea