of fame?

At sunrise Losely found himself on the high-road into which a labyrinth
of lanes had led him, and opposite to a milestone, by which he learned
that he had been long turning his back on the metropolis, and that he
was about ten miles distant from the provincial city of Ouzelford. By
this time his horse was knocked up, and his own chronic pains began to
make themselves acutely felt; so that, when, a little farther on, he
came to a wayside inn, he was glad to halt; and after a strong drain,
which had the effect of an opiate, he betook himself to bed, and slept
till the noon was far advanced.

When Losely came down-stairs, the common room of the inn was occupied by
a meeting of the trustees of the highroads; and, on demanding breakfast,
he was shown into a small sanded parlour adjoining the kitchen. Two
other occupants--a man and a woman--were there already, seated at a
table by the fireside, over a pint of half-and-half. Losely, warming
himself at the hearth, scarcely noticed these humble revellers by a
glance. And they, after a displeased stare at the stalwart frame which
obscured the cheering glow they had hitherto monopolised, resumed a
muttered conversation; of which, as well as of the vile modicum that
refreshed their lips, the man took the lion's share. Shabbily forlorn
were that man's habiliments--turned and re-turned, patched, darned,
weather-stained, grease-stained--but still retaining that kind of
mouldy, grandiose, bastard gentility, which implies that the wearer has
known better days; and, in the downward progress of fortunes when they
once fall, may probably know still worse.

The woman was some years older than her companion, and still more
forlornly shabby. Her garments seemed literally composed of particles of
dust glued together, while her face might have insured her condemnation
as a witch before any honest jury in the reign of King James the First.
His breakfast, and the brandy-bottle that flanked the loaf, were now
placed before Losely; and, as distastefully he forced himself to eat,
his eye once more glanced towards, and this time rested on, the shabby
man, in the sort of interest with which one knave out of elbows
regards another. As Jasper thus looked, gradually there stole on him
a reminiscence of those coarse large features--that rusty disreputable
wig. The recognition, however, was not mutual; and presently, after a
whisper interchanged between the man and the woman, the latter rose,