ourer he had met on the way had touched his
hat to him. Besides, who wears a shooting-dress in the middle of June,
or a shooting-dress at all, unless he be either a game-keeper or a
gentleman licensed to shoot?

Kenelm entered a large store-shop for ready-made clothes and purchased
a suit such as might be worn on Sundays by a small country yeoman or
tenant-farmer of a petty holding,--a stout coarse broadcloth upper
garment, half coat, half jacket, with waistcoat to match, strong
corduroy trousers, a smart Belcher neckcloth, with a small stock of
linen and woollen socks in harmony with the other raiment. He bought
also a leathern knapsack, just big enough to contain this wardrobe, and
a couple of books, which with his combs and brushes he had brought away
in his pockets; for among all his trunks at home there was no knapsack.

These purchases made and paid for, he passed quickly through the town,
and stopped at a humble inn at the outskirt, to which he was attracted
by the notice, "Refreshment for man and beast." He entered a little
sanded parlour, which at that hour he had all to himself, called for
breakfast, and devoured the best part of a fourpenny loaf with a couple
of hard eggs.

Thus recruited, he again sallied forth, and deviating into a thick wood
by the roadside, he exchanged the habiliments with which he had left
home for those he had purchased, and by the help of one or two big
stones sunk the relinquished garments into a small but deep pool which
he was lucky enough to find in a bush-grown dell much haunted by snipes
in the winter.

"Now," said Kenelm, "I really begin to think I have got out of myself.
I am in another man's skin; for what, after all, is a skin but a soul's
clothing, and what is clothing but a decenter skin? Of its own natural
skin every civilized soul is ashamed. It is the height of impropriety
for any one but the lowest kind of savage to show it. If the purest
soul now existent upon earth, the Pope of Rome's or the Archbishop of
Canterbury's, were to pass down the Strand with the skin which Nature
gave to it bare to the eye, it would be brought up before a magistrate,
prosecuted by the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and committed to
jail as a public nuisance.

"Decidedly I am now in another man's skin. Kenelm Chillingly, I no
longer

"Remain

"Yours faithfully;

"But am,

"With profound consideration,

"Your obedient humble servant."

With light step an