er eyed him more keenly.

"Are you hungry?"

He smiled.

"Not very!"

"That means you're half-starved without knowing it," she said
decisively. "Go in yonder," and she pointed with one of her knitting
needles to the room beyond the bar whence the hum of male voices
proceeded. "I'll send you some hot soup with plenty of stewed meat and
bread in it. An old man like you wants more than the road food. Take him
in, Peke!"

"Didn't I tell ye!" ejaculated Peke, triumphantly looking round at
Helmsley. "She's one that's got 'er 'art in the right place! I say, Miss
Tranter, beggin' yer parding, my friend aint a sponger, ye know! 'E can
pay ye a shillin' or two for yer trouble!"

Miss Tranter nodded her head carelessly.

"The food's threepence and the bed fourpence," she said. "Breakfast in
the morning, threepence,--and twopence for the washing towel. That makes
a shilling all told. Ale and liquors extra."

With that she turned her back on them, and Peke, pulling Helmsley by the
arm, took him into the common room of the inn, where there were several
men seated round a long oak table with "gate-legs" which must have been
turned by the handicraftsmen of the time of Henry the Seventh. Here
Peke set down his basket of herbs in a corner, and addressed the company
generally.

"'Evenin', mates! All well an' 'arty?"

Three or four of the party gave gruff response. The others sat smoking
silently. One end of the table was unoccupied, and to this Peke drew a
couple of rush-bottomed chairs with sturdy oak backs, and bade Helmsley
sit down beside him.

"It be powerful warm to-night!" he said, taking off his cap, and showing
a disordered head of rough dark hair, sprinkled with grey. "Powerful
warm it be trampin' the road, from sunrise to sunset, when the dust lies
thick and 'eavy, an' all the country's dry for a drop o' rain."

"Wal, _you_ aint got no cause to grumble at it," said a fat-faced man in
very dirty corduroys. "It's _your_ chice, an' _your_ livin'! _You_ likes
the road, an' _you_ makes your grub on it! 'Taint no use _you_ findin'
fault with the gettin' o' _your_ victuals!"

"Who's findin' fault, Mister Dubble?" asked Peke soothingly. "I on'y
said 'twas powerful warm."

"An' no one but a sawny 'xpects it to be powerful cold in July," growled
Dubble--"though some there is an' some there be what cries fur snow in
August, but I aint one on 'em."

"No, 'e aint one on 'em," commented a burly farmer, blowing away the
f