"You'd have been welcome to see him instead of me seeing him," growled
the Tinker; "for he was a long-winded one."

Not without a sense of injury in the remembrance, the Tinker gloomily
closed his eyes. Mr. Traveller, deeming the Tinker a short-winded one,
from whom no further breath of information was to be derived, betook
himself to the gate.

Swung upon its rusty hinges, it admitted him into a yard in which there
was nothing to be seen but an outhouse attached to the ruined building,
with a barred window in it. As there were traces of many recent
footsteps under this window, and as it was a low window, and unglazed,
Mr. Traveller made bold to peep within the bars. And there to be sure he
had a real live Hermit before him, and could judge how the real dead
Hermits used to look.

He was lying on a bank of soot and cinders, on the floor, in front of a
rusty fireplace. There was nothing else in the dark little kitchen, or
scullery, or whatever his den had been originally used as, but a table
with a litter of old bottles on it. A rat made a clatter among these
bottles, jumped down, and ran over the real live Hermit on his way to his
hole, or the man in _his_ hole would not have been so easily discernible.
Tickled in the face by the rat's tail, the owner of Tom Tiddler's ground
opened his eyes, saw Mr. Traveller, started up, and sprang to the window.

"Humph!" thought Mr. Traveller, retiring a pace or two from the bars. "A
compound of Newgate, Bedlam, a Debtors' Prison in the worst time, a
chimney-sweep, a mudlark, and the Noble Savage! A nice old family, the
Hermit family. Hah!"