native mildness struggled with the
pain I had unwittingly given him--

"If your thirst be as emphatic as your greeting, friend Heavy-fist, it
will certainly be a kindly deed to lead you to the drinking-place. My
shoulder tingles with your good-fellowship," he added, keeping two
arms'-lengths clear of me. "Do you wish," he said, "merely to cleanse
a dusty throat, or for blue or pink oblivion?"

"Why," I answered laughingly, "I have come a longish journey since
yesterday night--a journey out of count of all reasonable mileage--and
I might fairly plead a dusty throat as excuse for a beginning; but as
to the other things mentioned, those tinted forgetfulnesses, I do not
even know what you mean."

"Undoubtedly you are a stranger," said the friendly youth, eyeing me
from top to toe with renewed wonder, "and by your unknown garb one from
afar."

"From how far no man can say--not even I--but from very far, in truth.
Let that stay your curiosity for the time. And now to bench and
ale-mug, on good fellow!--the shortest way. I was never so thirsty as
this since our water-butts went overboard when I sailed the southern
seas as a tramp apprentice, and for three days we had to damp our black
tongues with the puddles the night-dews left in the lift of our
mainsail."

Without more words, being a little awed of me, I thought, the boy led
me through the good-humoured crowd to where, facing the main road to
the town, but a little sheltered by a thicket of trees covered with
gigantic pink blossoms, stood a drinking-place--a cluster of tables set
round an open grass-plot. Here he brought me a platter of some light
inefficient cakes which merely served to make hunger more
self-conscious, and some fine aromatic wine contained in a
triple-bodied flask, each division containing vintage of a separate
hue. We broke our biscuits, sipped that mysterious wine, and talked of
many things until at last something set us on the subject of astronomy,
a study I found my dapper gallant had some knowledge of--which was not
to be wondered at seeing he dwelt under skies each night set thick
above his curly head with tawny planets, and glittering constellations
sprinkled through space like flowers in May meadows. He knew what
worlds went round the sun, larger or lesser, and seeing this I began to
question him, for I was uneasy in my innermost mind and, you will
remember, so far had no certain knowledge of where I was, only a dim,
restless suspicion