rs of a ship which had suffered by a storm in the Downs. The
Wapping landlady was on her return from the same place, where she had
attended the payment of a man-of-war, with sundry powers of attorney,
granted by the sailors, who had lived upon credit at her house. Her
competitor in fame was a dealer in wine, a smuggler of French lace, and a
petty gamester just arrived from Paris, in the company of an English
barber, who sat on his right hand, and the young woman was daughter of a
country curate, in her way to London, where she was bound apprentice to a
milliner.

Hitherto Fathom had sat in silent astonishment at the manners of his
fellow-travellers, which far exceeded the notions he had preconceived of
English plainness and rusticity. He found himself a monument of that
disregard and contempt which a stranger never fails to meet with from the
inhabitants of this island; and saw, with surprise, an agreeable young
creature sit as solitary and unheeded as himself.

He was, indeed, allured by the roses of her complexion, and the innocence
of her aspect, and began to repent of having pretended ignorance of the
language, by which he was restrained from exercising his eloquence upon
her heart; he resolved, however, to ingratiate himself, if possible, by
the courtesy and politeness of dumb show, and for that purpose put his
eyes in motion without farther delay.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

ANOTHER PROVIDENTIAL DELIVERANCE FROM THE EFFECTS OF THE SMUGGLER'S
INGENIOUS CONJECTURE.

During these deliberations, the wine merchant, with a view to make a
parade of his superior parts and breeding, as well as to pave the way for
a match at backgammon, made a tender of his snuff-box to our adventurer,
and asked, in bad French, how he travelled from Paris. This question
produced a series of interrogations concerning the place of Ferdinand's
abode in that city, and his business in England, so that he was fain to
practise the science of defence, and answered with such ambiguity, as
aroused the suspicion of the smuggler, who began to believe our hero had
some very cogent reason for evading his curiosity; he immediately set his
reflection at work, and, after various conjectures, fixed upon Fathom's
being the Young Pretender. Big with this supposition, he eyed him with
the most earnest attention, comparing his features with those of the
Chevalier's portrait which he had seen in France, and though the faces
were as unlike as any two h