and on, and on--till a curious blueness overspread the countenance of the
shepherd's wife, who had regarded with no little surprise the first
stranger's free offer to the second of what did not belong to him to
dispense.

'I knew it!' said the toper to the shepherd with much satisfaction. 'When
I walked up your garden before coming in, and saw the hives all of a row,
I said to myself; "Where there's bees there's honey, and where there's
honey there's mead." But mead of such a truly comfortable sort as this I
really didn't expect to meet in my older days.' He took yet another pull
at the mug, till it assumed an ominous elevation.

'Glad you enjoy it!' said the shepherd warmly.

'It is goodish mead,' assented Mrs. Fennel, with an absence of enthusiasm
which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise for one's cellar
at too heavy a price. 'It is trouble enough to make--and really I hardly
think we shall make any more. For honey sells well, and we ourselves can
make shift with a drop o' small mead and metheglin for common use from
the comb-washings.'

'O, but you'll never have the heart!' reproachfully cried the stranger in
cinder-gray, after taking up the mug a third time and setting it down
empty. 'I love mead, when 'tis old like this, as I love to go to church
o' Sundays, or to relieve the needy any day of the week.'

'Ha, ha, ha!' said the man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of the
taciturnity induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would not
refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade's humour.