you from your repose; I would rather share it. You are probably not
going my way, and as I am in no hurry, I should not like to lose the
opportunity chance has so happily given me of renewing acquaintance
with one who has often been present to my thoughts since we last met."
Thus saying, the minstrel stretched himself at ease on the bank, and
Kenelm followed his example.

There certainly was a change in the owner of the dog with the
begging-tray, a change in costume, in countenance, in that
indescribable self-evidence which we call "manner." The costume was
not that Bohemian attire in which Kenelm had first encountered the
wandering minstrel, nor the studied, more graceful garb, which so well
became his shapely form during his visit to Luscombe. It was now
neatly simple, the cool and quiet summer dress any English gentleman
might adopt in a long rural walk. And as he uncovered his head to
court the cooling breeze, there was a graver dignity in the man's
handsome Rubens-like face, a line of more concentrated thought in the
spacious forehead, a thread or two of gray shimmering here and there
through the thick auburn curls of hair and beard. And in his manner,
though still very frank, there was just perceptible a sort of
self-assertion, not offensive, but manly; such as does not misbecome
one of maturer years, and of some established position, addressing
another man much younger than himself, who in all probability has
achieved no position at all beyond that which the accident of birth
might assign to him.

"Yes," said the minstrel, with a half-suppressed sigh, "the last year
of my vagrant holidays has come to its close. I recollect that the
first day we met by the road-side fountain, I advised you to do like
me, seek amusement and adventure as a foot-traveller. Now, seeing