change the
intentions of the stranger. He hesitated a moment, then muttered between
his teeth: and sinking his knapsack on the ground, he cast himself into
a chair beside the fire, stretched his limbs, and cried gaily, "So be
it, my host: shut up your house again. Bring me a cup of beer, and a
crust of bread, and so much for supper! As for bed, this chair will do
vastly well."

"Perhaps we can manage better for you than that chair," answered the
host. "But our best accommodation must seem bad enough to a gentleman:
we are very poor people--hard-working, but very poor."

"Never mind me," answered the stranger, busying himself in stirring the
fire; "I am tolerably well accustomed to greater hardships than sleeping
on a chair in an honest man's house; and though you are poor, I will
take it for granted you are honest."

The man grinned: and turning to Alice, bade her spread what their
larder would afford. Some crusts of bread, some cold potatoes, and some
tolerably strong beer, composed all the fare set before the traveller.

Despite his previous boasts, the young man made a wry face at these
Socratic preparations, while he drew his chair to the board. But his
look grew more gay as he caught Alice's eye; and as she lingered by the
table, and faltered out some hesitating words of apology, he seized
her hand, and pressing it tenderly--"Prettiest of lasses," said he--and
while he spoke he gazed on her with undisguised admiration--"a man who
has travelled on foot all day, through the ugliest country within the
three seas, is sufficiently refreshed at night by the sight of so fair a
face."

Alice hastily withdrew her hand, and went and seated herself in a corner
of the room, when she continued to look at the stranger with her usual
vacant gaze, but with a half-smile upon her rosy lips.

Alice's father looked hard first at one, then at the other.

"Eat, sir," said he, with a sort of chuckle, "and no fine words; poor
Alice is honest, as you said just now."

"To be sure," answered the traveller, employing with great zeal a set
of strong, even, and dazzling teeth at the tough crusts; "to be sure
she is. I did not mean to offend you; but the fact is, that I am half a
foreigner; and abroad, you know, one may say a civil thing to a pretty
girl without hurting her feelings, or her father's either."

"Half a foreigner! why, you talk English as well as I do," said the
host, whose intonation and words were, on the whole, a littl