fogies sit
round that end of the room and talk about old times. Old times,
indeed!--what they want in Market Milcaster is new times."

Spargo pricked up his ears.

"Well, but it's rather interesting to hear old fogies talk about old
times," he said. "I love it!"

"Then you can get as much of it as ever you want here," remarked the
barmaid. "Look in tonight any time after eight o'clock, and if you
don't know more about the history of Market Milcaster by ten than you
did when you sat down, you must be deaf. There are some old gentlemen
drop in here every night, regular as clockwork, who seem to feel that
they couldn't go to bed unless they've told each other stories about
old days which I should think they've heard a thousand times already!"

"Very old men?" asked Spargo.

"Methuselahs," replied the lady. "There's old Mr. Quarterpage, across
the way there, the auctioneer, though he doesn't do any business
now--they say he's ninety, though I'm sure you wouldn't take him for
more than seventy. And there's Mr. Lummis, further down the
street--he's eighty-one. And Mr. Skene, and Mr. Kaye--they're regular
patriarchs. I've sat here and listened to them till I believe I could
write a history of Market Milcaster since the year One."

"I can conceive of that as a pleasant and profitable occupation," said
Spargo.

He chatted a while longer in a fashion calculated to cheer the
barmaid's spirits, after which he went out and strolled around the town
until seven o'clock, the "Dragon's" hour for dinner. There were no more
people in the big coffee-room than there had been at lunch and Spargo
was glad, when his solitary meal was over, to escape to the
bar-parlour, where he took his coffee in a corner near to that sacred
part in which the old townsmen had been reported to him to sit.

"And mind you don't sit in one of their chairs," said the barmaid,
warningly. "They all have their own special chairs and their special
pipes there on that rack, and I suppose the ceiling would fall in if
anybody touched pipe or chair. But you're all right there, and you'll
hear all they've got to say."

To Spargo, who had never seen anything of the sort before, and who,
twenty-four hours previously, would have believed the thing impossible,
the proceedings of that evening in the bar-parlour of the "Yellow
Dragon" at Market Milcaster were like a sudden transference to the
eighteenth century. Precisely as the clock struck eight and a bell
began to