Who art tha?"

"I'm Barney Bill," replied the man. "Did you never hear of me? I'm
known on the road from Taunton to Newcastle and from Hereford to
Lowestoft. You can tell yer mother that you seed me."

A smile curled round Paul's lips at the comic idea of giving his mother
unsolicited information. "Barney Bill?" said he.

"Yuss," said the man. Then, after a pause, "What are you doing of
there?"

"Reading," said Paul.

"Let's have a look at it."

Paul regarded him suspiciously; but there was kindliness in the
twinkling glance. He handed him the sorry apology for a book.

Barney Bill turned it over. 'Why, said he, "it ain't got no beginning
and no end. It's all middle. 'Kenilworth.' Do yer like it?"

"Ay!" said Paul. "It's foine."

"Who do yer think wrote it?"

As both cover and a hundred pages at the beginning, including the
title-page, to say nothing of a hundred pages at the end, were missing,
Paul had no clue to the authorship.

"Dunno," said he.

"Sir Walter Scott."

Paul jumped to his feet. Sir Walter Scott, he knew not why or how, was
one of those bright names that starred in his historical darkness, like
Caesar and Napoleon and Ridley and Latimer and W. G. Grace.

"Tha' art sure? Sir Water Scott?"

The shock of meeting Sir Walter in the flesh could not have been
greater. The man nodded. "Think I'd tell yer a lie? I do a bit of
reading myself in the old 'bus there"-he jerked a thumb--"I've got some
books now. Would yer like to see 'em?"

Would a mouse like cheese? Paul started off with his new companion.

"If it wasn't for a book or two, I'd go melancholy mad and bust
myself," the latter remarked.

Paul's spirit leaped toward a spiritual brother. It was precisely his
own case.

"You'll find a lot of chaps that don't hold with books. Dessay you've
met 'em?"

Paul laughed, precipient of irony.

Barney Bill continued: "I've heard some on 'em say: 'What's the good of
books? Give me nature,' and they goes and asks for it at the
public-'ouse. Most say nothing at all, but just booze."

"Like father," said Paul.

"Eh?" cried his friend sharply.

"Sam Button, what married mother."

"Ali! so he boozes a lot, does he?"

Paul drew an impressionistic and lurid picture of Mr. Button.

"And they fight?"

"Like billy-o," said Paul.

They reached the van. Barney Bill, surprisingly agile in spite of his
twisted leg, sprang into the interior. Paul, standing between the
shafts, looked in with c