They plodded on together side by side for some time in unbroken silence. At last, after a short but stiff climb up a rough piece of road which terminated in an eminence commanding a wide and uninterrupted view of the surrounding country, they paused. The sea lay far below them, dimly covered by the gathering darkness, and the long swish and roll of the tide could be heard sweeping to and from the shore like the grave and graduated rhythm of organ music.

"We'd best 'ave a bit of a jabber to keep us goin'," said Peke, then—"Jabberin' do pass time, as the wimin can prove t' ye; an' arter such a jumblegut lane as this, it'll seem less lonesome. We're off the main road to towns an' sich like—this is a bye, an' 'ere it stops. We'll 'ave to git over yon stile an' cross the fields—'taint an easy nor clean way, but it's the best goin'. We'll see the lights o' the 'Trusty Man' just over the brow o' the next hill."

Helmsley drew a long breath, and sat down on a stone by the roadside. Peke surveyed him critically.

"Poor old gaffer! Knocked all to pieces, aint ye! Not used to the road? Glory be good to me! I should think ye wornt! Short in yer wind an' weak on yer pins! I'd as soon see my old grandad trampin' it as you. Look 'ere! Will ye take a dram out o' this 'ere bottle?"

He held up the bottle he spoke of,—it was black, and untemptingly dirty. Yet there was such a good-natured expression in the man's eyes, and so much honest solicitude written on his rough bearded face, that Helmsley felt it would be almost like insulting him to refuse his invitation.

"Tell me what's in it first!" he said, smiling.

"'Taint whisky," said Peke. "And 'taint brandy neither. Nor rum. Nor gin. Nor none o' them vile stuffs which brewers makes as arterwards goes to Parl'ment on the profits of 'avin' poisoned their constitooants. 'Tis nowt but just yerb wine."

"Yerb wine? Wine made of herbs?"

"That's it! 'Erbs or yerbs—I aint pertikler which—I sez both. This,"—and he shook the bottle he held vigorously—"is genuine yerb wine—an' made as I makes it, what do the Wise One say of it? 'E sez:—'It doth strengthen the heart of a man mightily, and refresheth the brain; drunk fasting, it braceth up the sinews and maketh the old feel young; it is of rare virtue to expel all evil humours, and if princes should drink of it oft it would be but an ill service to the world, as they might never die!'"

Peke recited these words slowly and laboriously; it was evident that he had learned them by heart, and that the effort of remembering them correctly was more or less painful to him.

Helmsley laughed, and stretched out his hand.

"Give it over here!" he said. "It's evidently just the stuff for me. How much shall I take at one go?"

Peke uncorked the precious fluid with care, smelt it, and nodded appreciatively.

"Swill it all if ye like," he remarked graciously. "'Twont hurt ye, an' there's more where that came from. It's cheap enuff, too—nature don't keep it back from no man. On'y there aint a many got sense enuff to thank the Lord when it's offered."

As he thus talked, Helmsley took the bottle from him and tasted its contents. The "yerb wine" was delicious. More grateful to his palate than Chambertin or Clos Vougeot, it warmed and invigorated him, and he took a long draught, Matthew Peke watching him drink it with great satisfaction.

"Let the yerbs run through yer veins for two or three minits, an' ye'll step across yon fields as light as a bird 'oppin' to its nest," he declared. "Talk o' tonics,—there's more tonic in a handful o' green stuff growin' as the Lord makes it to grow, than all the purr-escriptions what's sent out o' them big 'ouses in 'Arley Street, London, where the doctors sits from ten to two like spiders waitin' for flies, an' gatherin' in the guineas for lookin' at fools' tongues. Glory be good to me! If all the world were as sick as it's silly, there'd be nowt wantin' to 't but a grave an' a shovel!"

Helmsley smiled, and taking another pull at the black bottle, declared himself much better and ready to go on. He was certainly refreshed, and the weary aching of his limbs which had made every step of the road painful and difficult to him, was gradually passing off.

"You are very good to me," he said, as he returned the remainder of the "yerb wine" to its owner. "I wonder why?"

Peke took a draught of his mixture before replying. Then corking the bottle, he thrust it in his pocket.

"Ye wonders why?" And he uttered a sound between a grunt and a chuckle—"Ye may do that! I wonders myself!"

And, giving his basket a hitch, he resumed his slow trudging movement onward.

"You see," pursued Helmsley, keeping up the pace beside him, and beginning to take pleasure in the conversation—"I may be anything or anybody——"

"Ye may that," agreed Peke, his eyes fixed as usual on the ground. "Ye may be a jail-bird or a missioner,—they'se much of a muchity, an' goes on the road lookin' quite simple like, an' the simpler they seems the deeper they is. White 'airs an' feeble legs 'elps 'em along considerable,—nowt's better stock-in-trade than tremblin' shins. Or ye might be a War-office neglect,—ye looks a bit set that way."

"What's a War-office neglect?" asked Helmsley, laughing.

"One o' them totterin' old chaps as was in the Light Brigade," answered Peke. "There's no end to 'em. They'se all over every road in the country. All of 'em fought wi' Lord Cardigan, an' all o' 'em's driven to starve by an ungrateful Gov'ment. They won't be all dead an' gone till a hundred years 'as rolled away, an' even then I shouldn't wonder if one or two was still left on the tramp a-pipin' his little 'arf-a-league onard tale o' woe to the first softy as forgits the date o' the battle." Here he gave an inquisitive side-glance at his companion. "But you aint quite o' the Balaclava make an' colour. Yer shoulders is millingterry, but yer 'ead is business. Ye might be a gentleman if 'twornt for yer clothes."

Helmsley heard this definition of himself without flinching.

"I might be a thief," he said—"or an escaped convict. You've been kind to me without knowing whether I am one or the other, or both. And I want to know why?"

Peke stopped in his walk. They had come to the stile over which the way lay across the fields, and he rested himself and his basket for a moment against it.

"Why?" he repeated,—then suddenly raising one hand, he whispered, "Listen! Listen to the sea!"

The evening had now almost closed in, and all around them the country lay dark and solitary, broken here and there by tall groups of trees which at night looked like sable plumes, standing stiff and motionless in the stirless summer air. Thousands of stars flashed out across this blackness, throbbing in their orbits with a quick pulsation as of uneasy hearts beating with nameless and ungratified longing. And through the tense silence came floating a long, sweet, passionate cry,—a shivering moan of pain that touched the edge of joy,—a song without words, of pleading and of prayer, as of a lover, who, debarred from the possession of the beloved, murmurs his mingled despair and hope to the unsubstantial dream of his own tortured soul. The sea was calling to the earth,—calling to her in phrases of eloquent and urgent music,—caressing her pebbly shores with winding arms of foam, and showering kisses of wild spray against her rocky bosom. "If I could come to thee! If thou couldst come to me!" was the burden of the waves,—the ceaseless craving of the finite for the infinite, which is, and ever shall be, the great chorale of life. The shuddering sorrow of that low rhythmic boom of the waters rising and falling fathoms deep under cliffs which the darkness veiled from view, awoke echoes from the higher hills around, and David Helmsley, lifting his eyes to the countless planet-worlds sprinkled thick as flowers in the patch of sky immediately above him, suddenly realised with a pang how near he was to death,—how very near to that final drop into the unknown where the soul of man is destined to find All or Nothing! He trembled,—not with fear,—but with a kind of anger at himself for having wasted so much of his life. What had he done, with all his toil and pains? He had gathered a multitude of riches. Well, and then? Then,—why then, and now, he had found riches but vain getting. Life and Death were still, as they have always been, the two supreme Facts of the universe. Life, as ever, asserted itself with an insistence demanding something far more enduring than the mere possession of gold, and the power which gold brings. And Death presented its unwelcome aspect in the same perpetual way as the Last Recorder who, at the end of the day, closes up accounts with a sum-total paid exactly in proportion to the work done. No more, and no less. And with Helmsley these accounts were reaching a figure against which his whole nature fiercely rebelled,—the figure of Nought, showing no value in his life's efforts or its results. And the sound of the sea to-night in his ears was more full of reproach than peace.

"When the water moans like that," said Peke softly, under his breath, "it seems to me as if all the tongues of drowned sailors 'ad got into it an' was beggin' of us not to forget 'em lyin' cold among the shells an' weed. An' not only the tongues o' them seems a-speakin' an' a-cryin', but all the stray bones o' them seems to rattle in the rattle o' the foam. It goes through ye sharp, like a knife cuttin' a sour apple; an' it's made me wonder many a time why we was all put 'ere to git drowned or smashed or choked off or beat down somehows just when we don't expect it. Howsomiver, the Wise One sez it's all right!"

"And who is the Wise One?" asked Helmsley, trying to rouse himself from the heavy thoughts engendered in his mind by the wail of the sea.

"The Wise One was a man what wrote a book a 'underd years ago about 'erbs," said Peke. "'The Way o' Long Life,' it's called, an' my father an' grandfather and great-grandfather afore 'em 'ad the book, an' I've got it still, though I shows it to nobody, for nobody but me wouldn't unnerstand it. My father taught me my letters from it, an' I could spell it out when I was a kid—I've growed up on it, an' it's all I ever reads. It's 'ere"—and he touched his ragged vest. "I trusts it to keep me goin' 'ale an' 'arty till I'm ninety,—an' that's drawin' it mild, for my father lived till a 'underd, an' then on'y went through slippin' on a wet stone an' breakin' a bone in 'is back; an' my grandfather saw 'is larst Christmas at a 'underd an' ten, an' was up to kissin' a wench under the mistletoe, 'e was sich a chirpin' old gamecock. 'E didn't look no older'n you do now, an' you're a chicken compared to 'im. You've wore badly like, not knowin' the use o' yerbs."

"That's it!" said Helmsley, now following his companion over the stile and into the dark dewy fields beyond—"I need the advice of the Wise One! Has he any remedy for old age, I wonder?"

"Ay, now there ye treads on my fav'rite corn!" and Peke shook his head with a curious air of petulance. "That's what I'm a-lookin' for day an' night, for the Wise One 'as got a bit in 'is book which 'e's cropped out o' another Wise One's savin's,—a chap called Para-Cel-Sus"—and Peke pronounced this name in three distinct and well-divided syllables. "An this is what it is: 'Take the leaves of the Daura, which prevent those who use it from dying for a hundred and twenty years. In the same way the flower of the secta croa brings a hundred years to those who use it, whether they be of lesser or of longer age.' I've been on the 'unt for the 'Daura' iver since I was twenty, an' I've arskt ivery 'yerber I've ivir met for the 'Secta Croa,' an' all I've 'ad sed to me is 'Go 'long wi' ye for a loony jackass! There aint no sich thing.' But jackass or no, I'm of a mind to think there is such things as both the 'Daura' an' the 'Secta Croa,' if I on'y knew the English of 'em. An' s'posin' I ivir found 'em——"

"You would become that most envied creature of the present age,—a millionaire," said Helmsley; "you could command your own terms for the wonderful leaves,—you would cease to tramp the road or to gather herbs, and you would live in luxury like a king!"

"Not I!"—and Peke gave a grunt of contempt. "Kings aint my notion of 'appiness nor 'onesty neither. They does things often for which some o' the poor 'ud be put in quod, an' no mercy showed 'em, an' yet 'cos they're kings they gits off. An' I aint great on millionaires neither. They'se mis'able ricketty coves, all gone to pot in their in'ards through grubbin' money an' eatin' of it like, till ivery other kind o' food chokes 'em. There's a chymist in London what pays me five shillings an ounce for a little green yerb I knows on, cos' it's the on'y med'cine as keeps a millionaire customer of 'is a-goin'. I finds the yerb, an' the chymist gits the credit. I gits five shillin', an' the chymist gits a guinea. That's all right! I don't mind! I on'y gathers,—the chymist, 'e's got to infuse the yerb, distil an' bottle it. I'm paid my price, an 'e's paid 'is. All's fair in love an' war!"

He trudged on, his footsteps now rendered almost noiseless by the thick grass on which he trod. The heavy dew sparkled on every blade, and here and there the pale green twinkle of a glow-worm shone like a jewel dropped from a lady's gown. Helmsley walked beside his companion at an even pace,—the "yerb wine" had undoubtedly put strength in him and he was almost unconscious of his former excessive fatigue. He was interested in Peke's "jabber," and wondered, somewhat enviously, why such a man as this, rough, ragged, and uneducated, should seem to possess a contentment such as he had never known.

"Millionaires is gin'rally fools," continued Peke; "they buys all they wants, an' then they aint got nothin' more to live for. They gits into motor-cars an' scours the country, but they never sees it. They never 'ears the birds singin', an' they misses all the flowers. They never smells the vi'lets nor the mayblossom—they on'y gits their own petrol stench wi' the flavour o' the dust mixed in. Larst May I was a-walkin' in the lanes o' Devon, an' down the 'ill comes a motor-car tearin' an' scorchin' for all it was worth, an' bang went somethin' at the bottom o' the thing, an' it stops suddint. Out jumps a French chauffy, parlyvooin' to hisself, an' out jumps the man what owns it an' takes off his goggles. 'This is Devonshire, my man?' sez 'e to me. 'It is,' I sez to 'im. An' then the cuckoo started callin' away over the trees. 'What's that?' sez 'e lookin' startled like. 'That's the cuckoo,' sez I. An' he takes off 'is 'at an' rubs 'is 'ead, which was a' fast goin' bald. 'Dear, dear me!' sez 'e—'I 'aven't 'eard the cuckoo since I was a boy!' An' he rubs 'is 'ead again, an' laughs to hisself—'Not since I was a boy!' 'e sez. 'An' that's the cuckoo, is it? Dear, dear me!' 'You 'aven't bin much in the country p'r'aps?' sez I. 'I'm always in the country,' 'e sez—'I motor everywhere, but I've missed the cuckoo somehow!' An' then the chauffy puts the machine right, an' he jumps in an' gives me a shillin'. 'Thank-ye, my man!' sez 'e—'I'm glad you told me 'twas a real cuckoo!' Hor—er—hor—er—hor—er!" And Peke gave vent to a laugh peculiarly his own. "Mebbe 'e thought I'd got a Swiss clock with a sham cuckoo workin' it in my basket! 'I'm glad,' sez 'e, 'you told me 'twas a real cuckoo!' Hor—er—hor—er—hor—er!"

The odd chuckling sounds of merriment which were slowly jerked forth as it were from Peke's husky windpipe, were droll enough in themselves to be somewhat infectious, and Helmsley laughed as he had not done for many days.

"Ay, there's a mighty sight of tringum-trangums an' nonsense i' the world," went on Peke, still occasionally giving vent to a suppressed "Hor—er—hor"—"an' any amount o' Tom Conys what don't know a real cuckoo from a sham un'. Glory be good to me! Think o' the numskulls as goes in for pendlecitis! There's a fine name for ye! Pendlecitis! Hor—er—hor! All the fash'nables 'as got it, an' all the doctors 'as their knives sharpened an' ready to cut off the remains o' the tail we 'ad when we was all 'appy apes together! Hor—er—hor! An' the bit o' tail 's curled up in our in'ards now where it ain't got no business to be. Which shows as 'ow Natur' don't know 'ow to do it, seein' as if we 'adn't wanted a tail, she'd a' took it sheer off an' not left any behind. But the doctors thinks they knows a darn sight better'n Natur', an' they'll soon be givin' lessons in the makin' o' man to the Lord A'mighty hisself! Hor—er—hor! Pendlecitis! That's a precious monkey's tail, that there! In my grandfather's day we didn't 'ear 'bout no monkey's tails,—'twas just a chill an' inflammation o' the in'ards, an' a few yerbs made into a tea an' drunk 'ot fastin', cured it in twenty-four hours. But they've so many new-fangled notions nowadays, they've forgot all the old 'uns. There's the cancer illness,—people goes off all over the country now from cancer as never used to in my father's day, an' why? 'Cos they'se gittin' too wise for Nature's own cure. Nobody thinks o' tryin' agrimony,—water agrimony—some calls it water hemp an' bastard agrimony—'tis a thing that flowers in this month an' the next,—a brown-yellow blossom on a purple stalk, an' ye find it in cold places, in ponds an' ditches an' by runnin' waters. Make a drink of it, an' it'll mend any cancer, if 'taint too far gone. An' a cancer that's outside an' not in, 'ull clean away beautiful wi' the 'elp o' red clover. Even the juice o' nettles, which is common enough, drunk three times a day will kill any germ o' cancer, while it'll set up the blood as fresh an' bright as iver. But who's a-goin' to try common stuff like nettles an' clover an' water hemp, when there's doctors sittin' waitin' wi' knives an' wantin' money for cuttin' up their patients an' 'urryin' 'em into kingdom-come afore their time! Glory be good to me! What wi' doctors an' 'omes an' nusses, an' all the fuss as a sick man makes about hisself in these days, I'd rather be as I am, Matt Peke, a-wanderin' by hill an' dale, an' lyin' down peaceful to die under a tree when my times comes, than take any part wi' the pulin' cowards as is afraid o' cold an' fever an' wet feet an' the like, just as if they was poor little shiverin' mice instead o' men. Take 'em all round, the wimin's the bravest at bearin' pain,—they'll smile while they'se burnin' so as it sha'n't ill-convenience anybody. Wonderful sufferers, is wimin!"

"Yet they are selfish enough sometimes," said Helmsley, quickly.

"Selfish? Wheer was ye born, D. David?" queried Peke—"An' what wimin 'ave ye know'd? Town or country?"

Helmsley was silent.

"Arsk no questions an' ye'll be told no lies!" commented Peke, with a chuckle. "I sees! Ye've bin a gay old chunk in yer time, mebbe! An' it's the wimin as goes in for gay old chunks as ye've made all yer larnin of. But they ain't wimin—not as the country knows 'em. Country wimin works all day an' as often as not dandles a babby all night,—they've not got a minnit but what they aint a-troublin' an' a-worryin' 'bout 'usband or childer, an' their faces is all writ over wi' the curse o' the garden of Eden. Selfish? They aint got the time! Up at cock-crow, scrubbin' the floors, washin' the babies, feedin' the fowls or the pigs, peelin' the taters, makin' the pot boil, an' tryin' to make out 'ow twelve shillin's an' sixpence a week can be made to buy a pound's worth o' food, trapsin' to market, an' wonderin' whether the larst born in the cradle aint somehow got into the fire while mother's away,—'opin' an' prayin' for the Lord's sake as 'usband don't come 'ome blind drunk,—where's the room for any selfishness in sich a life as that?—the life lived by 'undreds o' wimin all over this 'ere blessed free country? Get 'long wi' ye, D. David! Old as y' are, ye 'ad a mother in yer time,—an' I'll take my Gospel oath there was a bit o' good in 'er!"

Helmsley stopped abruptly in his walk.

"You are right, man!" he said, "And I am wrong! You know women better than I do, and—you give me a lesson! One is never too old to learn,"—and he smiled a rather pained smile. "But—I have had a bad experience!"

"Well, if y'ave 'ad it ivir so bad, yer 'xperience aint every one's," retorted Peke. "If one fly gits into the soup, that don't argify that the hull pot 's full of 'em. An' there's more good wimin than bad—takin' 'em all round an' includin' 'op pickers, gypsies an' the like. Even Miss Tranter aint wantin' in feelin', though she's a bit sour like, owin' to 'avin missed a 'usband an' all the savin' worrity wear-an-tear a 'usband brings, but she aint arf bad. Yon's the lamp of 'er 'Trusty Man' now."

A gleam of light, not much larger than the glitter of one of the glow-worms in the grass, was just then visible at the end of the long field they were traversing.

"That's an old cart-road down there wheer it stands," continued Peke. "As bad a road as ivir was made, but it runs straight into Devonshire, an' it's a good place for a pub. For many a year 'twornt used, bein' so rough an' ready, but now there's such a crowd o' motors tearin, over Countisbury 'Ill, the carts takes it, keepin' more to theirselves like, an' savin' smashin'. Miss Tranter she knew what she was a-doin' of when she got a licence an' opened 'er bizniss. 'Twas a ramshackle old farm-'ouse, goin' all to pieces when she bought it an' put up 'er sign o' the 'Trusty Man,' an' silly wenches round 'ere do say as 'ow it's 'aunted, owin' to the man as 'ad it afore Miss Tranter, bein' found dead in 'is bed with 'is 'ands a-clutchin' a pack o' cards. An' the ace o' spades—that's death—was turned uppermost. So they goes chatterin' an' chitterin' as 'ow the old chap 'ad been playin' cards wi' the devil, an' got a bad end. But Miss Tranter, she don't listen to maids' gabble,—she's doin' well, devil or no devil—an' if any one was to talk to 'er 'bout ghosteses an' sich-like, she'd wallop 'em out of 'er bar with a broom! Ay, that she would! She's a powerful strong woman Miss Tranter, an' many's the larker what's felt 'er 'and on 'is collar a-chuckin' 'im out o' the 'Trusty Man' neck an' crop for sayin' somethin' what aint ezackly agreeable to 'er feelin's. She don't stand no nonsense, an' though she's lib'ral with 'er pennorths an' pints she don't wait till a man's full boozed 'fore lockin' up the tap-room. 'Git to bed, yer hulkin' fools!' sez she, 'or ye may change my 'Otel for the Sheriff's.' An' they all knuckles down afore 'er as if they was childer gettin' spanked by their mother. Ah, she'd 'a made a grand wife for a man! 'E wouldn't 'ave 'ad no chance to make a pig of hisself if she'd been anywheres round!"

"Perhaps she won't take me in!" suggested Helmsley.

"She will, an' that sartinly!" said Peke. "She'll not refuse bed an' board to any friend o' mine."

"Friend!" Helmsley echoed the word wonderingly.

"Ay, friend! Any one's a friend what trusts to ye on the road, aint 'e? Leastways that's 'ow I take it."

"As I said before, you are very kind to me," murmured Helmsley; "and I have already asked you—Why?"

"There aint no rhyme nor reason in it," answered Peke. "You 'elps a man along if ye sees 'e wants 'elpin', sure-ly,—that's nat'ral. 'Tis on'y them as is born bad as don't 'elp nothin' nor nobody. Ye're old an' fagged out, an' yer face speaks a bit o' trouble—that's enuff for me. Hi' y' are!—hi' y' are, old 'Trusty Man!'"

And striding across a dry ditch which formed a kind of entrenchment between the field and the road, Peke guided his companion round a dark corner and brought him in front of a long low building, heavily timbered, with queer little lop-sided gable windows set in the slanting, red-tiled roof. A sign-board swung over the door and a small lamp fixed beneath it showed that it bore the crudely painted portrait of a gentleman in an apron, spreading out both hands palms upwards as one who has nothing to conceal,—the ideal likeness of the "Trusty Man" himself. The door itself stood open, and the sound of male voices evinced the presence of customers within. Peke entered without ceremony, beckoning Helmsley to follow him, and made straight for the bar, where a tall woman with remarkably square shoulders stood severely upright, knitting.

"'Evenin', Miss Tranter!" said Peke, pulling off his tattered cap. "Any room for poor lodgers?"

Miss Tranter glanced at him, and then at his companion.

"That depends on the lodgers," she answered curtly.

"That's right! That's quite right, Miss!" said Peke with propitiatory deference. "You 'se allus right whatsoever ye does an' sez! But yer knows me,—yer knows Matt Peke, don't yer?"

Miss Tranter smiled sourly, and her knitting needles glittered like crossed knives as she finished a particular row of stitches on which she was engaged before condescending to reply. Then she said:—

"Yes, I know you right enough, but I don't know your company. I'm not taking up strangers."

"Lord love ye! This aint a stranger!" exclaimed Peke. "This 'ere's old David, a friend o' mine as is out o' work through gittin' more years on 'is back than the British Gov'ment allows, an' 'e's trampin' it to see 'is relations afore 'e gits put to bed wi' a shovel. 'E's as 'armless as they makes 'em, an' I've told 'im as 'ow ye' don't take in nowt but 'spectable folk. Doant 'ee turn out an old gaffer like 'e be, fagged an' footsore, to sleep in open—doant 'ee now, there's a good soul!"

Miss Tranter went on knitting rapidly. Presently she turned her piercing gimlet grey eyes on Helmsley.

"Where do you come from, man?" she demanded.

Helmsley lifted his hat with the gentle courtesy habitual to him.

"From Bristol, ma'am."

"Tramping it?"

"Yes."

"Where are you going?"

"To Cornwall."

"That's a long way and a hard road," commented Miss Tranter; "You'll never get there!"

Helmsley gave a slight deprecatory gesture, but said nothing.

Miss Tranter eyed him more keenly.

"Are you hungry?"

He smiled.

"Not very!"

"That means you're half-starved without knowing it," she said decisively. "Go in yonder," and she pointed with one of her knitting needles to the room beyond the bar whence the hum of male voices proceeded. "I'll send you some hot soup with plenty of stewed meat and bread in it. An old man like you wants more than the road food. Take him in, Peke!"

"Didn't I tell ye!" ejaculated Peke, triumphantly looking round at Helmsley. "She's one that's got 'er 'art in the right place! I say, Miss Tranter, beggin' yer parding, my friend aint a sponger, ye know! 'E can pay ye a shillin' or two for yer trouble!"

Miss Tranter nodded her head carelessly.

"The food's threepence and the bed fourpence," she said. "Breakfast in the morning, threepence,—and twopence for the washing towel. That makes a shilling all told. Ale and liquors extra."

With that she turned her back on them, and Peke, pulling Helmsley by the arm, took him into the common room of the inn, where there were several men seated round a long oak table with "gate-legs" which must have been turned by the handicraftsmen of the time of Henry the Seventh. Here Peke set down his basket of herbs in a corner, and addressed the company generally.

"'Evenin', mates! All well an' 'arty?"

Three or four of the party gave gruff response. The others sat smoking silently. One end of the table was unoccupied, and to this Peke drew a couple of rush-bottomed chairs with sturdy oak backs, and bade Helmsley sit down beside him.

"It be powerful warm to-night!" he said, taking off his cap, and showing a disordered head of rough dark hair, sprinkled with grey. "Powerful warm it be trampin' the road, from sunrise to sunset, when the dust lies thick and 'eavy, an' all the country's dry for a drop o' rain."

"Wal, you aint got no cause to grumble at it," said a fat-faced man in very dirty corduroys. "It's your chice, an' your livin'! You likes the road, an' you makes your grub on it! 'Taint no use you findin' fault with the gettin' o' your victuals!"

"Who's findin' fault, Mister Dubble?" asked Peke soothingly. "I on'y said 'twas powerful warm."

"An' no one but a sawny 'xpects it to be powerful cold in July," growled Dubble—"though some there is an' some there be what cries fur snow in August, but I aint one on 'em."

"No, 'e aint one on 'em," commented a burly farmer, blowing away the foam from the brim of a tankard of ale which was set on the table in front of him. "'E alluz takes just what cooms along easy loike, do Mizter Dubble!"

There followed a silence. It was instinctively felt that the discussion was hardly important enough to be continued. Moreover, every man in the room was conscious of a stranger's presence, and each one cast a furtive glance at Helmsley, who, imitating Peke's example, had taken off his hat, and now sat quietly under the flickering light of the oil lamp which was suspended from the middle of the ceiling. He himself was intensely interested in the turn his wanderings had taken. There was a certain excitement in his present position,—he was experiencing the "new sensation" he had longed for,—and he realised it with the fullest sense of enjoyment. To be one of the richest men in the world, and yet to seem so miserably poor and helpless as to be regarded with suspicion by such a class of fellows as those among whom he was now seated, was decidedly a novel way of acquiring an additional relish for the varying chances and changes of life.

"Brought yer father along wi' ye, Matt?" suddenly asked a wizened little man of about sixty, with a questioning grin on his hard weather-beaten features.

"I aint up to 'awkin' dead bodies out o' their graves yet, Bill Bush," answered Peke. "Unless my old dad's corpsy's turned to yerbs, which is more'n likely, I aint got 'im. This 'ere's a friend o' mine,—Mister David—e's out o' work through the Lord's speshul dispensation an' rule o' natur—gettin' old!"

A laugh went round, but a more favourable impression towards Peke's companion was at once created by this introduction.

"Sorry for ye!" said the individual called Bill Bush, nodding encouragingly to Helmsley. "I'm a bit that way myself."

He winked, and again the company laughed. Bill was known as one of the most daring and desperate poachers in all the countryside, but as yet he had never been caught in the act, and he was one of Miss Tranter's "respectable" customers. But, truth to tell, Miss Tranter had some very odd ideas of her own. One was that rabbits were vermin, and that it was of no consequence how or by whom they were killed. Another was that "wild game" belonged to everybody, poor and rich. Vainly was it explained to her that rich landowners spent no end of money on breeding and preserving pheasants, grouse, and the like,—she would hear none of it.

"Stuff and nonsense," she said sharply. "The birds breed by themselves quite fast enough if let alone,—and the Lord intended them so to do for every one's use and eating, not for a few mean and selfish money-grubs who'd shoot and sell their own babies if they could get game prices for them!"

And she had a certain sympathy with Bill Bush and his nefarious proceedings. As long as he succeeded in evading the police, so long would he be welcome at the "Trusty Man," but if once he were to be clapped into jail the door of his favourite "public" would be closed to him. Not that Miss Tranter was a woman who "went back," as the saying is, on her friends, but she had to think of her licence, and could not afford to run counter to those authorities who had the power to take it away from her.

"I'm a-shrivellin' away for want o' suthin' to do," proceeded Bill. "My legs aint no show at all to what they once was."

And he looked down at those members complacently. They were encased in brown velveteens much the worse for wear, and in shape resembled a couple of sticks with a crook at the knees.

"I lost my sitiwation as gamekeeper to 'is Royal 'Ighness the Dook o' Duncy through bein' too 'onest," he went on with another wink. "'Orful pertikler, the Dook was,—nobuddy was 'llowed to be 'onest wheer 'e was but 'imself! Lord love ye! It don't do to be straight an' square in this world!"

Helmsley listened to this bantering talk, saying nothing. He was pale, and sat very still, thus giving the impression of being too tired to notice what was going on around him. Peke took up the conversation.

"Stow yer gab, Bill!" he said. "When you gits straight an' square, it'll be a round 'ole ye'll 'ave to drop into, mark my wurrd! An' no Dook o' Duncy 'ull pull ye out! This 'ere old friend o' mine don't unnerstand ye wi' yer fustian an' yer galligaskins. 'E's kinder eddicated—got a bit o' larnin' as I 'aves myself."

"Eddicated!" echoed Bill. "Eddication's a fine thing, aint it, if it brings an old gaffer like 'im to trampin' the road! Seems to me the more people's eddicated the less they's able to make a livin'."

"That's true! that's dorned true!" said the man named Dubble, bringing his great fist down on the table with a force that made the tankards jump. "My darter, she's larned to play the pianner, an' I'm dorned if she kin do anythin' else! Just a gillflurt she is, an' as sassy as a magpie. That's what eddication 'as made of 'er an' be dorned to 't!"

"'Scuse me," and Bill Bush now addressed himself immediately to Helmsley, "ef I may be so bold as to arsk you wheer ye comes from, meanin' no 'arm, an' what's yer purfession?"

Helmsley looked up with a friendly smile.

"I've no profession now," he answered at once. "But in my time—before I got too old—I did a good deal of office work."

"Office work! In a 'ouse of business, ye means? Readin', 'ritin', 'rithmetic, an' mebbe sweepin' the floor at odd times an' runnin' errands?"

"That's it!" answered Helmsley, still smiling.

"An' they won't 'ave ye no more?"

"I am too old," he answered quietly.

Here Dubble turned slowly round and surveyed him.

"How old be ye?"

"Seventy."

Silence ensued. The men glanced at one another. It was plain that the "one touch of nature which makes the whole world kin" was moving them all to kindly and compassionate feeling for the age and frail appearance of their new companion. What are called "rough" and "coarse" types of humanity are seldom without a sense of reverence and even affection for old persons. It is only among ultra-selfish and callous communities where over-luxurious living has blunted all the finer emotions, that age is considered a crime, or what by some individuals is declared worse than a crime, a "bore."

At that moment a short girl, with a very red face and round beady eyes, came into the room carrying on a tray two quaint old pewter tureens full of steaming soup, which emitted very savoury and appetising odours. Setting these down before Matt Peke and Helmsley, with two goodly slices of bread beside them, she held out her podgy hand.

"Threepence each, please!"

They paid her, Peke adding a halfpenny to his threepence for the girl herself, and Helmsley, who judged it safest to imitate Peke's behaviour, doing the same. She giggled.

"'Ope you aint deprivin' yourselves!" she said pertly.

"No, my dear, we aint!" retorted Peke. "We can afford to treat ye like the gentlemen doos! Buy yerself a ribbin to tie up yer bonnie brown 'air!"

She giggled again, and waited to see them begin their meal, then, with a comprehensive roll of her round eyes upon all the company assembled, she retired. The soup she had brought was certainly excellent,—strong, invigorating, and tasty enough to have done credit to a rich man's table, and Peke nodded over it with mingled surprise and appreciation.

"Miss Tranter knows what's good, she do!" he remarked to Helmsley in a low tone. "She's cooked this up speshul! This 'ere broth aint flavoured for me,—it's for you! Glory be good to me if she aint taken a fancy ter yer!—shouldn't wonder if ye 'ad the best in the 'ouse!"

Helmsley shook his head demurringly, but said nothing. He knew that in the particular position in which he had placed himself, silence was safer than speech.

Meanwhile, the short beady-eyed handmaiden returned to her mistress in the kitchen, and found that lady gazing abstractedly into the fire.

"They've got their soup," she announced, "an' they're eatin' of it up!"

"Is the old man taking it?" asked Miss Tranter.

"Yes'm. An' 'e seems to want it 'orful bad, 'orful bad 'e do, on'y 'e swallers it slower an' more soft like than Matt Peke swallers."

Miss Tranter ceased to stare at the fire, and stared at her domestic instead.

"Prue," she said solemnly, "that old man is a gentleman!"

Prue's round eyes opened a little more roundly.

"Lor', Mis' Tranter!"

"He's a gentleman," repeated the hostess of the "Trusty Man" with emphasis and decision; "and he's fallen on bad times. He may have to beg his bread along the road or earn a shilling here and there as best he can, but nothing"—and here Miss Tranter shook her forefinger defiantly in the air—"nothing will alter the fact that he's a gentleman!"

Prue squeezed her fat red hands together, breathed hard, and not knowing exactly what else to do, grinned. Her mistress looked at her severely.

"You grin like a Cheshire cat," she remarked. "I wish you wouldn't."

Prue at once pursed in her wide mouth to a more serious double line.

"How much did they give you?" pursued Miss Tranter.

"'Apenny each," answered Prue.

"How much have you made for yourself to-day all round!"

"Sevenpence three fardin's," confessed Prue, with an appealing look.

"You know I don't allow you to take tips from my customers," went on Miss Tranter. "You must put those three farthings in my poor-box."

"Yes'm!" sighed Prue meekly.

"And then you may keep the sevenpence."

"Oh thank y' 'm! Thank y', Mis' Tranter!" And Prue hugged herself ecstatically. "You'se 'orful good to me, you is, Mis' Tranter!"

Miss Tranter stood a moment, an upright inflexible figure, surveying her.

"Do you say your prayers every night and morning as I told you to do?"

Prue became abnormally solemn.

"Yes, I allus do, Mis' Tranter, wish I may die right 'ere if I don't!"

"What did I teach you to say to God for the poor travellers who stop at the 'Trusty Man'?"

"'That it may please Thee to succour, help and comfort all that are in danger, necessity and tribulation, we beseech Thee to hear us Good Lord!'" gabbled Prue, shutting her eyes and opening them again with great rapidity.

"That's right!" And Miss Tranter bent her head graciously. "I'm glad you remember it so well! Be sure you say it to-night. And now you may go, Prue."

Prue went accordingly, and Miss Tranter, resuming her knitting, returned to the bar, and took up her watchful position opposite the clock, there to remain patiently till closing time.