"No, it's all well enough in its way, but it swallows time,"
he remarked. "You see, my wife and I have our own pin at home,
and when I'm a bit tired, I just draw a glass for myself, and
smoke a pipe, and there's no time wasted coming and going, and
drinking first with this and then with the other."

A little way past the inn we came upon a notice-board whereon the
lord of the manor warned all wayfarers against trespassing on the
common by making encampments, lighting fires or cutting firewood
thereon, and to this fortunate circumstance I owe the most
interesting story my companion had to tell.

We had mentioned the lord of the manor as we crossed the common,
and the notice- board brought him once more to the old man's
mind.

"Poor gentleman!" he said, pointing to the board as though it
was the lord of the manor himself standing there, "I shouldn't
like to have had the trouble he's had on my shoulders."

"Indeed?" I said interrogatively.

"Well, you see, sir," he continued, instinctively lowering his
voice to a confidential impressiveness, "he married an actress;
a noble lady too she was, a fine dashing merry lady as ever you
saw. All went well for a time, and then it suddenly got
whispered about that she and the village schoolmaster were
meeting each other at nights, in the meadow-bottom at the end of
her own park. It lies over that way,--I could take you to the
very place. The schoolmaster was a noble-looking young man too,