I had just time to catch a glimpse of a figure huddled in the corner,
and a sweet pretty girl with chestnut curls seated beside it, behind
the glass. After the coach came a heavy broad-shoulder'd servant
riding on a stout grey; who flung us a sharp glance as he went by,
and at twenty yards' distance turn'd again to look.

"That's luck," observed the pickpocket, as the travelers disappear'd
down the highway: "Tomorrow, with a slice of it, I might be riding
in such a coach as that, and have the hydropsy, to boot. Good lack!
when I was ta'en prisoner by the Turks a-sailing i' the _Mary_ of
London, and sold for a slave at Algiers, I escap'd, after two months,
with Eli Sprat, a Gravesend man, in a small open boat. Well, we sail'd
three days and nights, and all the time there was a small sea bird
following, flying round and round us, and calling two notes that
sounded for all the world like 'Wind'ard! Wind'ard!' So at last says
Eli, ''Tis heaven's voice bidding us ply to wind'ard.' And so we did,
and on the fourth day made Marseilles; and who should be first to meet
Eli on the quay but a Frenchwoman he had married five years before,
and left. And the jade had him clapp'd in the pillory, alongside of a
cheating fishmonger with a collar of stinking smelts, that turn'd poor
Eli's stomach completely. Now there's somewhat to set against the
story of Whittington next time 'tis told you."

I was now for bidding the old rascal good-bye. But he offer'd to go
with me as far as Hungerford, where we should turn into the Bath
road. At first I was shy of accepting, by reason of his coat,
wherein patches of blue, orange-tawny and flame-color quite overlaid
the parent black: but closed with him upon his promise to teach me
the horsemanship that I so sadly lacked. And by time we enter'd