rs' Prison in the worst time, a
chimney-sweep, a mudlark, and the Noble Savage! A nice old family, the
Hermit family. Hah!"

Mr. Traveller thought this, as he silently confronted the sooty object in
the blanket and skewer (in sober truth it wore nothing else), with the
matted hair and the staring eyes. Further, Mr. Traveller thought, as the
eye surveyed him with a very obvious curiosity in ascertaining the effect
they produced, "Vanity, vanity, vanity! Verily, all is vanity!"

"What is your name, sir, and where do you come from?" asked Mr. Mopes the
Hermit--with an air of authority, but in the ordinary human speech of one
who has been to school.

Mr. Traveller answered the inquiries.

"Did you come here, sir, to see _me_?"

"I did. I heard of you, and I came to see you.--I know you like to be
seen." Mr. Traveller coolly threw the last words in, as a matter of
course, to forestall an affectation of resentment or objection that he
saw rising beneath the grease and grime of the face. They had their
effect.

"So," said the Hermit, after a momentary silence, unclasping the bars by
which he had previously held, and seating himself behind them on the
ledge of the window, with his bare legs and feet crouched up, "you know I
like to be seen?"

Mr. Traveller looked about him for something to sit on, and, observing a
billet of wood in a corner, brought it near the window. Deliberately
seating himself upon it, he answered, "Just so."

Each looked at the other, and each appeared to take some pains to get the
measure of the other.

"Then you have come to ask me why I lead this life," said the Hermit,
frowning in a stormy manner. "I never tell that to any human being. I
will not be asked that."

"Certainly you will not be asked that by me," said Mr. Traveller, "for I
have not the slightest desire to know."

"You are an uncouth man," said Mr. Mopes the Hermit.

"You are another," said Mr. Traveller.

The Hermit, who was plainly in the habit of overawing his visitors with
the novelty of his filth and his blanket and skewer, glared at his
present visitor in some discomfiture and surprise: as if he had taken aim
at him with a sure gun, and his piece had missed fire.

"Why do you come here at all?" he asked, after a pause.

"Upon my life," said Mr. Traveller, "I was made to ask myself that very
question only a few minutes ago--by a Tinker too."

As he glanced towards the gate in saying it, the Hermit glanced i