they, after a displeased stare at the stalwart frame which obscured the
cheering glow they had hitherto monopolised, resumed a muttered
conversation; of which, as well as of the vile modicum that refreshed
their lips, the man took the lion's share. Shabbily forlorn were that
man's habiliments--turned and re-turned, patched, darned, weather-
stained, grease-stained--but still retaining that kind of mouldy,
grandiose, bastard gentility, which implies that the wearer has known
better days; and, in the downward progress of fortunes when they once
fall, may probably know still worse.

The woman was some years older than her companion, and still more
forlornly shabby. Her garments seemed literally composed of particles of
dust glued together, while her face might have insured her condemnation
as a witch before any honest jury in the reign of King James the First.
His breakfast, and the brandy-bottle that flanked the loaf, were now
placed before Losely; and, as distastefully he forced himself to eat,
his eye once more glanced towards, and this time rested on, the shabby
man, in the sort of interest with which one knave out of elbows regards
another. As Jasper thus looked, gradually there stole on him a
reminiscence of those coarse large features--that rusty disreputable wig.
The recognition, however, was not mutual; and presently, after a whisper
interchanged between the man and the woman, the latter rose, and
approaching Losely, dropped a curtsey, and said, in a weird, under voice:
"Stranger! luck's in store for you. Tell your fortune!" As she spoke,
from some dust-hole in her garments she produced a pack of cards, on
whose half-obliterated faces seemed incrusted the dirt of ages.
Thrusting these antiquities under Jasper's nose, she added, "Wish and
cut."

"Yshaw," said Jasper, who, though sufficiently superstitious in some