odden
Place,--Upper?"

"Yes, it be," answered the pot-boy, with a sleepy air, caught in that
sleepy atmosphere; and chiming his pewter against an area rail with a
dull clang, he chanted forth "Pots oho!" with a note as dirge-like as
that which in the City of the Plague chanted "Out with the dead!"

Meanwhile the two wayfarers exchanged bows and parted; the sprucer
wayfarer whether from the indulgence of a reflective mood, or from an
habitual indifference to things and persons not concerning him, ceased
to notice his fellow-solitary, and rather busied himself in sundry
little coquetries appertaining to his own person. He passed his hand
through his hair, re-arranged the cock of his hat, looked complacently
at his boots, which still retained the gloss of the morning's varnish,
drew down his wristbands, and, in a word, gave sign of a man who desires
to make an effect, and feels that he ought to do it. So occupied was he
in this self-commune that when he stopped at length at one of the small
doors in the small street and lifted his hand to the knocker, he
started to see that Wayfarer the Second was by his side. The two men
now examined each other briefly but deliberately. Wayfarer the First was
still young,--certainly handsome, but with an indescribable look about
the eye and lip, from which the other recoiled with an instinctive
awe,--a hard look, a cynical look,--a sidelong, quiet, defying,
remorseless look. His clothes were so new of gloss that they seemed put
on for the first time, were shaped to the prevailing fashion, and of a
taste for colours less subdued than is usual with Englishmen, yet still
such as a person of good mien could wear without incurring the charge
of vulgarity, though liable to that of self-conceit. If you doubted that
the man were a gentleman, you would have been puzzled to guess what else
he could be. Were it not for the look we have mentioned, and which
was perhaps not habitual, his appearance might have been called
prepossessing. In his figure there was the grace, in his step the
elasticity which come from just proportions and muscular strength.
In his hand he carried a supple switch-stick, slight and innocuous
to appearance, but weighted at the handle after the fashion of a
life-preserver. The tone of his voice was not displeasing to the ear,
though there might be something artificial in the swell of it,--the sort
of tone men assume when they desire to seem more frank and off-hand
than belong