nown peril to the security of the
Queen's highway.

We get on into another district. Here, public opinion is not flattering.
Some of the groups, gathered together in the road to observe us, begin
to speculate on our characters before we are quite out of hearing. Then,
this sort of dialogue, spoken in serious, subdued tones, just reaches
us: Question--What can they be? Answer--"_Trodgers!_"

This is particularly humiliating, because it happens to be true. We
certainly do trudge, and are therefore properly, though rather
unceremoniously, called trudgers, or "trodgers." But we sink to a lower
depth yet, a little further on. We are viewed as objects for pity. It is
a fine evening; we stop and lean against a bank by the roadside to look
at the sunset. An old woman comes tottering by on high pattens, very
comfortably and nicely clad. She sees our knapsacks, and instantly stops
in front of us, and begins to moan lamentably. Not understanding at
first what this means, we ask respectfully if she feels at all ill?
"Ah, poor fellows! poor fellows!" she sighs in answer, "obliged to carry
all your baggage on your own backs!--very hard! poor lads! very hard,
indeed!" And the good old soul goes away groaning over our evil plight,
and mumbling something which sounds very like an assurance that she has
got no money to give us.

In another part of the county we rise again gloriously in worldly
consideration. We pass a cottage; a woman looks out after us, over the
low garden wall, and rather hesitatingly calls us back. I approach her
first, and am thus saluted: "If you please, sir, what have you got to
sell?" Again, an old man meets us on the road, stops, cheerfully taps
our knapsacks with his stick, and says: "Aha! you're tradesmen, eh?
things to sell? I say, have you got any tea" (pronounced _tay_); "I'll
buy some _tay_!" Further on, we approach a group of miners breaking ore.
As we pass by, we hear one asking amazedly, "What have they got to sell
in those things on their backs?" and another answering, in the prompt
tones of a guesser who is convinced that he guesses right,
"Guinea-pigs!"

It is unfortunately impossible to convey to the reader an adequate idea,
by mere description, of the extraordinary gravity of manner, the looks
of surprise and the tones of conviction which accompanied these various
popular conjectures as to our calling and station in life, and which
added immeasurably at the time to their comic effect. Curiously