CHAPTER V
ONE IS MET
This was a somewhat tattered gentleman, very tall, seated comfortably against the hedge, long legs stretched before him, one terminating in a brown boot of good shape, the other in a black, through which a toe protruded. This gentleman was shaped from the waist upwards like a pear, in that his girth was considerable, his shoulders very narrow, and his head and face like a little round ball. He ate, as he reclined there, from a large piece of bread in one hand and a portion of cold sausage in the other; and he appeared to be no little incommoded as he did so, and as Mr. Wriford watched him, by a distressing affliction of the hiccoughs which, as they rent him, he pronounced hup!
"Hup!" said this gentleman with his mouth full; and then again "hup!" He then cleared his mouth, and regarding Mr. Wriford with a jolly smile, upraised the sausage in greeting and trolled forth in a very deep voice and in the familiar chant:
"'O all ye tired strangers of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise Him and magnify Him for ever'—hup!
"But you can't do that," continued the pear-shaped gentleman, "when the famine has you in the vitals and the soreness in the legs, as it has you, unless you've practised it as much as I have. Then it is both food and rest. In this wise—
"Hup!—O all ye hungry of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; praise Him and hup-nify Him for ever.
"Hunger, I assure you," said the pear-shaped gentleman, "flee-eth before that shout as the wild goat before the hunter. Hunger or any ill. I have known every ill and defeated them all. Selah!"
There was about this unusual gentleman that which doubly attracted Mr. Wriford. The Mr. Wriford of a very few days ago, who avoided eyes, who shrank from strangers, would hurriedly and self-consciously have passed him by. The Mr. Wriford with whom Figure of Wriford walked was attracted by the pear-shaped gentleman's careless happiness and attracted much more by his last words. He came a slow step nearer the pear-shaped gentleman, looked at Figure of Wriford, and from him with eyes that signalled secrecy to the pear-shaped gentleman, and in a low voice demanded: "You have known every ill? Have you ever been followed?"
The pear-shaped gentleman stared curiously at Mr. Wriford for a moment. Then he said: "Not so much followed, which implies interest or curiosity, as chased—which betokens vengeance or heat. With me that is a common lot. By dogs often and frequently bitten of them. By farmers a score time and twice assaulted. By—"
"Have you ever been followed by yourself?" Mr. Wriford interrupted him.