repentance after it."

"Not nohow, master, it doan't! And"--Speed-the-Plough cocked his eye--
"it doan't eat up half the victuals, your pipe doan't."

Here the honest yeoman gesticulated his keen sense of a clincher, which
the tinker acknowledged; and having, so to speak, sealed up the subject
by saying the best thing that could be said, the two smoked for some time
in silence to the drip and patter of the shower.

Ripton solaced his wretchedness by watching them through the briar hedge.
He saw the tinker stroking a white cat, and appealing to her, every now
and then, as his missus, for an opinion or a confirmation; and he thought
that a curious sight. Speed-the-Plough was stretched at full length,
with his boots in the rain, and his head amidst the tinker's pots,
smoking, profoundly contemplative. The minutes seemed to be taken up
alternately by the grey puffs from their mouths.

It was the tinker who renewed the colloquy. Said he, "Times is bad!"

His companion assented, "Sure-ly!"

"But it somehow comes round right," resumed the tinker. "Why, look here.
Where's the good o' moping? I sees it all come round right and tight.
Now I travels about. I've got my beat. 'Casion calls me t'other day to
Newcastle!--Eh?"

"Coals!" ejaculated Speed-the-Plough sonorously.

"Coals!" echoed the tinker. "You ask what I goes there for, mayhap?