imself out to sleep.

"By all means," said his father. "I was going to propose it myself.
We shall travel without halting till morning."

"Then 'good night.'"

"You appear in a hurry."

"It seems to me that it's my turn."

The barge was hardly in motion before Tristram began to snore.
Nor did he awake till the sun was up and shining in through the
little opening by the stern, through which he could see the legs of
the fat steersman on deck. While he rubbed his eyes his father
appeared at the cabin door with a bundle in one hand and a big
market-basket in the other.

"You sleep late, my son. I have already been marketing, as you see."

"Then we are at a standstill."

"Yes, but we move on again in three minutes."

"What have you bought?"

"Your breakfast. See--" and the Captain spread on the cabin table an
enormous sausage, two loaves of bread and a bottle of red wine.

"That is good, for I warn you I am hungry."

"But first of all you must dress."

"Am I not already dressed?"

"Let me point out that the uniform of a private soldier in his
Majesty's Coldstream Guards differs in so many respects from the
native costume of these parts that it can hardly fail to excite
remark. Listen: I have here two suits of clothes, in which we must
travel for the next day or two; I as a private gentleman and you as
my lackey."

"I begin to see that this way back to Harwich has its difficulties as
well as the other," sighed Tristram while they changed their suits.
This reflection threw him into a melancholy which lasted throughout
the day, insomuch that he hardly found heart to go on deck, but sat
on his bench in the cabin, feeding his heart on the prospect of
Sophia's joy at his return and listening to his father, who sat and
whistled on the cabin hatch, to the thuds of the towing-horse's
hoofs, and to the monotonous "huy!" and "vull!" of the boatman
whenever their barge encountered another and one of the twain
slackened rope to allow passage.

Occasionally they were hailed from the bank by travellers who desired
to journey downstream; but the invariable answer was that this barge
had been hired by a nobleman who wished to travel without company and
at his leisure. As Tristram, however, knew nothing of the Dutch
language, he imagined these to be but kindly salutations of the
inhabitants designed to enliven a voyage which (as he judged) must be
inexpressibly tedious to anyone who made it with any other purpose