rds the retiring crowd. They were two
shabby gentlemen of thirty years or under; though their clothes were not
yet actually torn or patched, most of their garments were already in
that premonitory state which warns the wearer of old breeches to sit
down with deliberation and grace, rather than with rash haste, and to
make no uselessly quick movements whereby an old sewing may rip open, or
the silk or cloth itself may split and gape in an unseemly manner,
furnishing a cause for mirth in better-clad men.

These two poor gentlemen were very unlike in appearance, except as to
their well-worn clothes and in respect of their rapiers, which were so
exactly similar that they might have been made for a duelling pair. Each
had a beautifully chiselled and polished bell-guard, with the Italian
cross-bar for the middle finger; each was sheathed in a good brown
leather sheath, with a chiselled steel shoe to drag on the pavement, and
each weapon hung from the wearer's shoulder-belt by two short chains of
well-furbished steel. The weapons looked serviceable, though they made
little pretence to beauty, in an age when most things worn by men and
women were adorned too much rather than too little.

But the men themselves were not alike. The shorter of the two was very
fair, with the complexion of a Saxon child, and unnaturally pink cheeks;
his nose turned up to a sharp point in the most extraordinary manner, so
that the pink openings of the nostrils seemed to stand upright above the
flaxen moustache, reminding one of the muzzles of certain wild cats. His
blue eyes were large, perfectly round, and often aggressively fixed, and
the long yellow lashes that bristled all round them might have passed
for rays. He wore a short pointed beard, and his very thick fair hair
was parted exactly in the middle and hung down below his dingy collar on
each side, perfectly straight and completely hiding his ears. There was
something both comic and disturbing in his aspect.

His companion was much less extraordinary in appearance, though any one
would have noticed him in a crowd as an unusual type. Instead of being
fair, he was as dark as a Moor; instead of turning up, his immensely
long and melancholy nose curved downwards over his thin lips like a
vulture's beak as if trying to peck at his chin. His eyes were shadowy
and uncertain under his prominent forehead and bushy eyebrows. His beard
was a mere black wisp, and the points of his scant moustaches were