verever I can mend my kettles, and sell my tracks!"

So saying, the tinker slid his panniers on the ground, gave a grunt of
release and satisfaction, and seated himself with great composure on the
stile, from which Leonard had retreated.

"But, dash my vig," resumed Mr. Sprott, as he once more surveyed
Leonard, "vy, you bees a rale gentleman now, sure_ly_. Vot's the
dodge--eh?"

"Dodge!" repeated Leonard mechanically--"I don't understand you." Then,
thinking that it was neither necessary nor expedient to keep up his
acquaintance with Mr. Sprott, nor prudent to expose himself to the
battery of questions which he foresaw that further parley would bring
upon him, he extended a crown-piece to the tinker; and saying with a
half smile, "You must excuse me for leaving you--I have business in the
town; and do me the favor to accept this trifle," he walked briskly off.

The tinker looked long at the crown-piece, and sliding it into his
pocket, said to himself--

"Ho--'ush-money! No go, my swell cove."

After venting that brief soliloquy he sat silent a little while, till
Leonard was nearly out of sight, then rose, resumed his fardle, and
creeping quick along the hedgerows, followed Leonard towards the town.
Just in the last field, as he looked over the hedge, he saw Leonard
accosted by a gentleman of comely mien and important swagger. That
gentleman soon left the young man, and came, whistling loud, up the
path, and straight towards the tinker. Mr. Sprott looked round, but the
hedge was too neat to allow of a hiding-place, so he put a bold front
on, and stepped forth like a man. But, alas for him! before he got into
the public path, the proprietor of the land, Mr. Richard Avenel, (for
the gentleman was no less a personage) had spied out the trespasser, and
called to him with a "Hillo, fellow," that spoke all the dignity of a
man who owns acres, and all the wrath of a man who beholds those acres
impudently invaded.

The tinker stopped, and Mr. Avenel stalked up to him. "What the devil
are you doing on my property, lurking by my hedge? I suspect you are an
incendiary!"

"I be a tinker," quoth Mr. Sprott, not louting low, (for a sturdy
republican was Mr. Sprott,) but like a lord of humankind,

"Pride in his port, defiance in his eye."

Mr. Avenel's fingers itched to knock the tinker's villanous hat off his
Jacobinical head, but he repressed the undignified impulse by thrusting
both hands deep into his trowsers' poc