f. At a casual glance he might have been taken for thirty, but his age
was fifty and more--if you could catch him in the morning before he had
put the paint on.

'Ladies and gentlemen of Bursley, this enlightened and beautiful town
which I am now visiting for the first time,' he began in a hard,
metallic voice, employing again with the glib accuracy of a machine the
exact phrases which he had been using all day, 'look at me--look well at
me. How old do you think I am? How old do I seem? Twenty, my dear, do
you say?' and he turned with practised insolence to a pot-girl in a red
shawl who could not have uttered an audible word to save her soul, but
who blushed and giggled with pleasure at this mark of attention. 'Ah!
you flatter, fair maiden! I look more than twenty, but I think I may
say that I do not look thirty. Does any lady or gentleman think I look
thirty? No! As a matter of fact, I was twenty-nine years of age when, in
South America, while exploring the ruins of the most ancient
civilization of the world--of the world, ladies and gentlemen--I made my
wonderful discovery, the Elixir of Youth!'

'What art blethering at, Licksy?' a drunken man called from the back of
the crowd, and the nickname stuck to the great discoverer during the
rest of the Wakes.

'That, ladies and gentlemen,' the Inca of Peru continued unperturbed,
'was--seventy-two years ago. I am now a hundred and one years old
precisely, and as fresh as a kitten, all along of my marvellous elixir.
Far older, for instance, than this good dame here.'

He pointed to an aged and wrinkled woman, in blue cotton and a white
mutch, who was placidly smoking a short cutty. This creature, bowed and
satiate with monotonous years, took the pipe from her indrawn lips, and
asked in a weary, trembling falsetto:

'How many wives hast had?'

'Seventane,' the Inca retorted quickly, dropping at once into broad
dialect, 'and now lone and lookin' to wed again. Wilt have me?'

'Nay,' replied the crone. 'I've buried four mysen, and no man o' mine
shall bury me.'

There was a burst of laughter, amid which the Inca, taking the crowd
archly into his confidence, remarked:

'I've never administered my elixir to any of my wives, ladies and
gentlemen. You may blame me, but I freely confess the fact;' and he
winked.

'Licksy! Licksy!' the drunken man idiotically chanted.

'And now,' the Inca proceeded, coming at length to the practical part of
his ovation, 'see here!' With t