ssurance that
suggested that the Inn belonged to him, and greeted those that awaited
him with such a nod as a monarch might accord to his vassals, he was
followed by one that showed in almost every particular his opposite. This
one, that represented an extreme of Norman character as his ally
represented an extreme of Gascon character, this one that seemed to
shelter timidly behind the effulgence of his companion, was a lean,
lanky, pallid fellow, clad wholly in black of a rustier and shabbier kind
than that worn by the reader in the window. From beneath his dingy black
felt hat thin wisps of flaxen hair flowed ridiculously enough about his
scraggy neck. While his Gascon comrade entered the room with the manner
of one who carries all before him, the Norman seemed to creep, or rather
to slink, in with lack-lustre eyes peering apologetically about him
through lowered pink eyelids, while his twitching fingers appeared to
protest apologetically for his intrusion into a society so far above his
deserts. But if in almost every particular he was the opposite to his
friend, in one particular, however, he resembled him, for a long rapier
hung from his side and slapped against his lean calves.

In a further regard, moreover, the two new-comers, however different they
might seem in build of body and in habit of apparel, resembled each other
more closely than they resembled any of the earlier occupants of the Inn
room. There are castes in rascality as in all other trades, classes,
professions, and mysteries, honorable or dishonorable, and this latest
pair of knaves belonged patently to the more amiable caste of
ruffianism--a higher or a lower caste, as you may be pleased to look at
it. In the bold eyes of the gaudily clad Gascon, as in the uneasy eyes of
the sable-coated Norman, there was a quality of candor which might be
sought for in vain among the rogues that greeted them. Certainly neither
the Gascon nor the Norman would have seemed reassuring figures to a timid
traveller on a lonely road, and yet there was, as it were, a kind of
gentility in their composition which would have been obvious to a reader
of men, and would have approved them as, in their way and of their race,
trustworthy. Here, the reader of men would say, are a brace of assassins
who hold a sort of honor in their hearts, who would never skulk in a
corner to stab an enemy in the back, nor wrong a wretched woman who
plainly was unwilling to be wronged--a brace of he