l, smothering a laugh, "what was I doing at
Hendon?"

"Doing! Well, a chap 'at was on the road along of me said that Master
Paul had started innkeeper."

"Innkeeper!"

There was a prolonged burst of laughter, amid which one amused patriarch
on a stick shouted: "Feel if tha's abed, Gubblum, ma man!"

"And if I is abed, it's better nor being in bed-lam, isn't it?" shouted
the peddler.

Then Gubblum scratched his head again, and said more quietly: "It caps
all. If it wasn't you, it must ha' been the old gentleman hissel'."

"Are we so much alike? Come, let's see your pack."

"His name was Paul, anyways."

Hugh Ritson had elbowed his way through the group, and was now at
Gubblum's elbow listening intently. When the others had laughed, he
alone preserved an equal countenance.

"Paul--what?" he asked.

"Nay, don't ax me--I know nowt no mair--I must be an auld maizelin, I
must, for sure!"

Hugh Ritson turned on his heel and walked off.

CHAPTER II.

The Vale of Newlands runs north and south. On its east banks rise the
Cat Bell fells and the Eel Crags; on the west rise Hindscarth and
Robinson, backed by Whiteless Pike and Grasmoor. A river flows down the
bed of the valley, springing in the south among the heights of Dale
Head, and emptying into Bassenthwaite on the north. A village known as
Little Town stands about midway in the vale, and a road runs along each
bank. The tents were pitched for the sports near the bed of the valley,
on the east side of the Newlands Beck. On the west side, above the road,
there was a thick copse of hazel, oak, and birch. From a clearing in
this wood a thin column of pale blue smoke was rising through the still
air. A hut in the shape of a cone stood a few yards from the road. It
was thatched from the ground upward with heather and bracken, leaving
only a low aperture as door. Near the hut a small fire of hazel sticks
crackled under the pot that swung from a forked triangle of oak limbs.
Fagots were stacked at one end of the clearing; a pile of loose bark lay
near. It was a charcoal pit, and behind a line of hurdles that were
propped with poles and intertwined with dead grass and gorse, an old man
was building a charcoal fire.

He was tall and slight, and he stooped. His eyes were large and heavy;
his long beard was whitening. He wore a low-crowned hat with broad brim,
and a loose flannel jacket without a waistcoat. Most of us convey the
idea that to our own view we are