father and son, from whom he had escaped with the greatest difficulty.

"Pretty fools," said I, "must any people have been who ever stole you;
but oh what fools if they wished to keep you after they had got you!"

The paper was stuffed with religious and anti-slavery cant, and merely
wanted a little of the teetotal nonsense to be a perfect specimen of
humbug.

I strolled forward, encountering more carts and more heaps of greengages;
presently I turned to the right by a street, which led some way up the
hill. The houses were tolerably large and all white. The town, with its
white houses placed by the seaside, on the skirt of a mountain, beneath a
blue sky and a broiling sun, put me something in mind of a Moorish
piratical town, in which I had once been. Becoming soon tired of walking
about, without any particular aim, in so great a heat, I determined to
return to the inn, call for ale, and deliberate on what I had best next
do. So I returned and called for ale. The ale which was brought was not
ale which I am particularly fond of. The ale which I am fond of is ale
about nine or ten months old, somewhat hard, tasting well of malt and
little of the hop--ale such as farmers, and noblemen too, of the good old
time, when farmers' daughters did not play on pianos and noblemen did not
sell their game, were in the habit of offering to both high and low, and
drinking themselves. The ale which was brought me was thin washy stuff,
which though it did not taste much of hop, tasted still less of malt,
made and sold by one Allsopp, who I am told calls himself a squire and a
gentleman--as he certainly may with quite as much right as many a lord
calls himself a nobleman and a gentleman; for surely it is not a fraction
more trumpery to make and sell ale than to fatten and sell game. The ale
of the Saxon squire, for Allsopp is decidedly an old Saxon name, however
unakin to the practice of old Saxon squires the selling of ale may be,
was drinkable for it was fresh, and the day, as I have said before,
exceedingly hot; so I took frequent draughts out of the shining metal
tankard in which it was brought, deliberating both whilst drinking, and
in the intervals of drinking, on what I had next best do. I had some
thoughts of crossing to the northern side of the bay, then, bearing the
north-east, wend my way to Amlwch, follow the windings of the sea-shore
to Mathafarn eithaf and Pentraeth Coch, and then return to Bangor, after
which I c