where the trees are the finest. I am sure that, when Noah first landed
on Ararat, he must have found some gentleman in black already settled in
the pleasantest part of the mountain, and waiting for his tenth of the
cattle as they came out of the Ark."

The parson fixed his meek eyes on the philosopher, and there
was in them something so deprecating rather than reproachful that
Dr. Riccabocca turned away his face, and refilled his pipe. Dr.
Riccabocca abhorred priests; but though Parson Dale was emphatically
a parson, he seemed at that moment so little of what Dr. Riccabocca
understood by a priest that the Italian's heart smote him for his
irreverent jest on the cloth. Luckily at this moment there was a
diversion to that untoward commencement of conversation in the appearance
of no less a personage than the donkey himself--I mean the donkey who ate
the apple.




CHAPTER VI.

The tinker was a stout, swarthy fellow, jovial and musical withal, for he
was singing a stave as he flourished his staff, and at the end of each
refrain down came the staff on the quarters of the donkey. The tinker
went behind and sang, the donkey went before and was thwacked.

"Yours is a droll country," quoth Dr. Riccabocca; "in mine, it is not the
ass that walks first in the procession that gets the blows."

The parson jumped from the stile, and looking over the hedge that divided