and gudgeon. All was clean and comfortable as a hospitable inn can be.

But they who frequented it interested me much more--as various and
animated a gathering as any I have seen. Yet in some peculiar manner
they seemed one and all not to the last tittle quite of this world.
They were, so to speak, more earthy, too definite, too true to the
mould, like figures in a bleak, bright light viewed out of darkness.
Certainly not one of them was at first blush prepossessing. Yet who
finds much amiss with the fox at last, though all he seems to have be
cunning?

Near beside me, however, sat retired a man a little younger and more
at his ease than most of the many there, and as busy with his eyes and
ears as I. His name, I learned presently, was Reverie; and from him I
gathered not a little information regarding the persons who talked and
sipped around us.

He told me at whiles that his house was not in the village, but in a
valley some few miles distant across the meadows; that he sat out
these bouts of argument and slander for the sheer delight he had in
gathering the myriad strands of that strange rope Opinion; that he
lived (heart, soul, and hope) well-nigh alone; that he deeply
mistrusted this place, and the company we were in, yet not for its
mistress's sake, who was at least faithful to her instincts, candid to
the candid, made no favourites, and, eventually, compelled order. He
told me also that if friends he had, he deemed it wiser not to name
them, since the least sibilant of the sound of the voice incites to
treachery; and in conclusion, that of all men he was acquainted with,
one at least never failed to right his humour; and that one was yonder
flabby, pallid fellow with the velvet collar to his coat, and the
rings on his fingers, and the gold hair, named Pliable, who sat beside
Mr. Stubborn on the settle by the fire.

When, then, I had finished my supper, I drew in my chair a little
closer to Mr. Reverie's and, having scribbled my wants on the
Landlady's slate, turned my attention to the talk.

At the moment when I first began to listen attentively they seemed to
be in heated dispute concerning the personal property of a certain Mr.
Christian, who was either dead or had inexplicably disappeared. Mr.
Obstinate, I gathered, had taken as his right this Christian's
"easy-chair"; a gentleman named Smoothman most of his other goods for
a debt; while a Parson Decorum had appropriated as heretical his
books and vari