he stile, when he heard hasty but timorous feet
behind him. He turned, and saw his friend Lenny.

LENNY (half-crying, and holding out the sixpence).--"Indeed, sir, I
would rather not. I would have given all to the Neddy."

PARSON.--"Why, then, my man, you have a still greater right to the
sixpence."

LENNY.--"No, sir; 'cause you only gave it to make up for the half apple.
And if I had given the whole, as I ought to have done, why, I should
have had no right to the sixpence. Please, sir, don't be offended; do
take it back, will you?"

The parson hesitated. And the boy thrust the sixpence into his hand, as
the ass had poked its nose there before in quest of the apple.

"I see," said Parson Dale, soliloquizing, "that if one don't give
Justice the first place at the table, all the other Virtues eat up her
share."

Indeed, the case was perplexing. Charity, like a forward, impudent
baggage as she is, always thrusting herself in the way, and taking other
people's apples to make her own little pie, had defrauded Lenny of his
due; and now Susceptibility, who looks like a shy, blush-faced, awkward
Virtue in her teens--but who, nevertheless, is always engaged in
picking the pockets of her sisters--tried to filch from him his lawful
recompense. The case was perplexing; for the parson held Susceptibility
in great honour, despite her hypocritical tricks, and did not like to
give her a slap in the face, which might frighten her away forever. So
Mr. Dale stood irresolute, glancing from the sixpence to Lenny, and from
Lenny to the sixpence.

"Buon giorno, Good-day to you," said a voice behind, in an accent
slightly but unmistakably foreign, and a strange-looking figure
presented itself at the stile.

Imagine a tall and exceedingly meagre man, dressed in a rusty suit of
black,--the pantaloons tight at the calf and ankle, and there forming a
loose gaiter over thick shoes, buckled high at the instep; an old cloak,
lined with red, was thrown over one shoulder, though the day was sultry;
a quaint, red, outlandish umbrella, with a carved brass handle, was
thrust under one arm, though the sky was cloudless: a profusion of raven
hair, in waving curls that seemed as fine as silk, escaped from the
sides of a straw hat of prodigious brim; a complexion sallow and
swarthy, and features which, though not without considerable beauty
to the eye of the artist, were not only unlike what we fair, well-fed,
neat-faced Englishmen are wont to consi