against the long wooden watering-trough in front of the inn. The
irregular old building looked picturesque in the soft light of
declining day, and all around was so still that we could hear the
voices of bowlers who were lingering upon the green, off at the
north side of the house, and retired from the highway by an
intervening garden. The varied tones of animation, and the phrases
uttered by the players, on different parts of the green, came
through the quiet air with a cheery ring. The language of the
bowling-green sounds very quaint to people unused to the game. "Too
much land, James!" cries one. "Bravo, bully-bowl! That's th' first
wood! Come again for more!" cries another. "Th' wrong bias, John!"
"How's that?" "A good road; but it wants legs! Narrow; narrow, o' to
pieces!" These, and such like phrases of the game, came distinctly
from the green into the highway that quiet evening. And here I am
reminded, as I write, that the philosophic Doctor Dalton was a
regular bowler upon Tattersall's green, at Old Trafford. These
things, however, are all aside from the little matters which I wish
to tell.

As we stood by the watering-trough, listening to the voices of the
bowlers, and to the occasional ringing of bells mingled with a low
buzz of merriment inside the house, there were many travellers went
by. They came, nearly all of them, from the Manchester side;
sometimes three or four in company, and sometimes a lonely
straggler. Some of them had poor-looking little bundles in their
hands; and, with a few exceptions, their dress, their weary gait,
and dispirited looks led me to think that many of them were
unemployed factory operatives, who had been wandering away to beg
where they would not be known. I have met so many shame-faced,
melancholy people in that condition during the last few months,