The tinker, blacker and grimmer than ever, stared hard at the altered person of his old acquaintance, and extended his sable fingers, as if inclined to convince himself by the sense of touch that it was Leonard in the flesh that he beheld, under vestments so marvellously elegant and preternaturally spruce.
Leonard shrank mechanically from the contact, while in great surprise he faltered,—
“You here, Mr. Sprott! What could bring you so far from home?”
“‘Ome!” echoed the tinker, “I ‘as no ‘ome! or rather, d’ ye see, Muster Fairfilt, I makes myself at ‘ome verever I goes! Lor’ love ye! I ben’t settled on no parridge. I wanders here and I vanders there, and that’s my ‘ome 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 wig,” resumed Mr. Sprott, as he once more surveyed Leonard, “vy, you bees a rale gentleman, now, surely! 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 favour to accept this trifle,” he walked briskly off.
The tinker looked long at the crown-piece, and then 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 fardel, 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 good hiding-place, so he put a bold front on it, 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 bespoke 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 human kind,—
“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 trousers’ pockets.
“A tinker!” he cried,—“that’s a vagrant; and I’m a magistrate, and I’ve a great mind to send you to the treadmill,—that I have. What do you do here, I say? You have not answered my question.”
“What does I do ‘ere?” said Mr. Sprott. “Vy, you had better ax my crakter of the young gent I saw you talking with just now; he knows me.”
“What! my nephew knows you?”
“W-hew,” whistled the tinker, “your nephew is it, sir? I have a great respek for your family. I ‘ve knowed Mrs. Fairfilt the vashervoman this many a year. I ‘umbly ax your pardon.” And he took off his hat this time.
Mr. Avenel turned red and white in a breath. He growled out something inaudible, turned on his heel, and strode off. The tinker watched him as he had watched Leonard, and then dogged the uncle as he had dogged the nephew. I don’t presume to say that there was cause and effect in what happened that night, but it was what is called “a curious coincidence” that that night one of Richard Avenel’s ricks was set on fire, and that that day he had called Mr. Sprott an incendiary. Mr. Sprott was a man of a very high spirit, and did not forgive an insult easily. His nature was inflammatory, and so was that of the lucifers which he always carried about him, with his tracts and glue-pots.
The next morning there was an inquiry made for the tinker, but he had disappeared from the neighbourhood.
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