d hastily back, and took
another long pull at the wine flask, without the formality of a cup.

"Were it not for this accursed custom," he said, "I might climb as high
as Varney himself. But who can climb when the room turns round with
him like a parish-top? I would the distance were greater, or the road
rougher, betwixt my hand and mouth! But I will drink nothing to-morrow
save water--nothing save fair water."

CHAPTER XIX.

PISTOL. And tidings do I bring, and lucky joys,
And happy news of price.
FALSTAFF. I prithee now deliver them like to men of this world.
PISTOL. A foutra for the world, and worldlings base!
I speak of Africa, and golden joys. --HENRY IV. PART II.

The public room of the Black Bear at Cumnor, to which the scene of
our story now returns, boasted, on the evening which we treat of,
no ordinary assemblage of guests. There had been a fair in the
neighbourhood, and the cutting mercer of Abingdon, with some of the
other personages whom the reader has already been made acquainted with,
as friends and customers of Giles Gosling, had already formed their
wonted circle around the evening fire, and were talking over the news of
the day.

A lively, bustling, arch fellow, whose pack, and oaken ellwand studded
duly with brass points, denoted him to be of Autolycus's profession,
occupied a good deal of the attention, and furnished much of the
amusement, of the evening. The pedlars of those days, it must be
remembered, were men of far greater importance than the degenerate
and degraded hawkers of our modern times. It was by means of these
peripatetic venders that the country trade, in the finer manufactures
used in female dress particularly, was almost entirely carried on; and
if a merchant of this description arrived at the dignity of travelling
with a pack-horse, he was a person of no small consequence, and company
for the most substantial yeoman or franklin whom he might meet in his
wanderings.

The pedlar of whom we speak bore, accordingly, an active and unrebuked
share in the merriment to which the rafters of the bonny Black Bear
of Cumnor resounded. He had his smile with pretty Mistress Cicely, his
broad laugh with mine host, and his jest upon dashing Master Goldthred,
who, though indeed without any such benevolent intention on his own
part, was the general butt of the evening. The pedlar and he were
closely engaged in a dispute upon the preference due to the Spa