not to teach you the strength of petticoat interest,--not in pictures
alone; and should I meet you again I may find you writing love-verses
yourself."

"After a conjecture so unwarrantable, I part company with you less
reluctantly than I otherwise might do. But I hope we shall meet
again."

"Your wish flatters me much; but, if we do, pray respect the
confidence I have placed in you, and regard my wandering minstrelsy
and my dog's tray as sacred secrets. Should we not so meet, it is but
a prudent reserve on my part if I do not give you my right name and
address."

"There you show the cautious common-sense which belongs rarely to
lovers of verse and petticoat interest. What have you done with your
guitar?"

"I do not pace the roads with that instrument: it is forwarded to me
from town to town under a borrowed name, together with other raiment
that this, should I have cause to drop my character of wandering
minstrel."

The two men here exchanged a cordial shake of the hand. And as the
minstrel went his way along the river-side, his voice in chanting
seemed to lend to the wavelets a livelier murmur, to the reeds a less
plaintive sigh.