an advantage which was
counterbalanced by a very forbidding aspect. But the most singular part
of her attire, in this very Protestant country, was a rosary, in which
the smaller beads were black oak, and those indicating the PATER-NOSTER
of silver, with a crucifix of the same metal.

This person made preparations for supper, by spreading a clean though
coarse cloth over a large oaken table, placing trenchers and salt upon
it, and arranging the fire to receive a gridiron. I observed her motions
in silence; for she took no sort of notice of me, and as her looks were
singularly forbidding, I felt no disposition to commence conversation.

When this duenna had made all preliminary arrangements, she took from
the well-filled pouch of my conductor, which he had hung up by the
door, one or two salmon, or GRILSES, as the smaller sort are termed, and
selecting that which seemed best and in highest season, began to cut
it into slices, and to prepare a GRILLADE; the savoury smell of which
affected me so powerfully that I began sincerely to hope that no delay
would intervene between the platter and the lip.

As this thought came across me, the man who had conducted the horse to
the stable entered the apartment, and discovered to me a countenance yet
more uninviting than that of the old crone who was performing with such
dexterity the office of cook to the party. He was perhaps sixty years
old; yet his brow was not much furrowed, and his jet-black hair was only
grizzled, not whitened, by the advance of age. All his motions spoke
strength unabated; and, though rather undersized, he had very broad
shoulders, was square-made, thin-flanked, and apparently combined in his
frame muscular strength and activity; the last somewhat impaired perhaps
by years, but the first remaining in full vigour. A hard and harsh
countenance--eyes far sunk under projecting eyebrows, which were
grizzled like his hair--a wide mouth, furnished from ear to ear with it
range of unimpaired teeth, of uncommon whiteness, and a size and breadth
which might have become the jaws of an ogre, completed this delightful
portrait. He was clad like a fisherman, in jacket and trousers of the
blue cloth commonly used by seamen, and had a Dutch case-knife, like
that of a Hamburgh skipper, stuck into a broad buff belt, which seemed
as if it might occasionally sustain weapons of a description still less
equivocally calculated for violence.

This man gave me an inquisitive, and,