traversed, paused, cast a simultaneous look at my occupation, and
induced no doubt by its allurements, seated themselves under the same
lime-trees, though at the farther end of the table. I surveyed the new-
comers with the curiosity natural to my years.

The elder of the two might have attained the age of thirty, though
sundry deep lines, and hues formerly florid and now faded, speaking of
fatigue, care, or dissipation, might have made him look somewhat older
than he was. There was nothing very prepossessing in his appearance.
He was dressed with a pretension ill suited to the costume appropriate
to a foot-traveller. His coat was pinched and padded; two enormous
pins, connected by a chain, decorated a very stiff stock of blue satin
dotted with yellow stars; his hands were cased in very dingy gloves
which had once been straw-colored, and the said hands played with a
whalebone cane surmounted by a formidable knob, which gave it the
appearance of a "life-pre server." As he took off a white napless hat,
which he wiped with great care and affection with the sleeve of his
right arm, a profusion of stiff curls instantly betrayed the art of man.
Like my landlord's ale, in that wig there was "no mistake;" it was
brought (after the fashion of the wigs we see in the popular effigies of
George IV. in his youth), low over his fore-head, and was raised at the
top. The wig had been oiled, and the oil had imbibed no small quantity
of dust; oil and dust had alike left their impression on the forehead
and cheeks of the wig's proprietor. For the rest, the expression of his
face was somewhat impudent and reckless, but not without a certain
drollery in the corners of his eyes.

The younger man was apparently about my own age,--a year or two older,
perhaps, judging rather from his set and sinewy frame than his boyish
countenance. And this last, boyish as it was, could not fail to command