At once there was a clamor, all bidding in one breath for my custom. So finishing my breakfast, I walked out with them to the tavern yard, where I had my pick among the sorriest-looking dozen of nags in England, and finally bought from the red-haired man, for five pounds, bridle, saddle, and a flea-bitten grey that seem’d more honestly raw-boned than the rest. And the owner wept tears at the parting with his beast, and thereby added a pang to the fraud he had already put upon me. And I rode from the tavern door suspecting laughter in the eyes of every passer-by.
The day (’twas drawing near noon as I started) was cold and clear, with a coating of rime over the fields: and my horse’s feet rang cheerfully on the frozen road. His pace was of the soberest: but, as I was no skilful rider, this suited me rather than not. Only it was galling to be told so, as happened before I had gone three miles.
’Twas my friend the pickpocket: and he sat before a fire of dry sticks a little way back from the road. His scanty hair, stiff as a badger’s, now stood upright around his batter’d cap, and he look’d at me over the bushes, with his hook’d nose thrust forward like a bird’s beak.
“Bien lightmans, comrade—good day! ’Tis a good world; so stop and dine.”
I pull’d up my grey.
“Glad you find it so,” I answered; “you had a nigh chance to compare it with the next, last night.”
“Shan’t do so well i’ the next, I fear,” he said with a twinkle: “but I owe thee something, and here’s a hedgehog that in five minutes’ll be baked to a turn. ’Tis a good world, and the better that no man can count on it. Last night my dripping duds helped me to a cant tale, and got me a silver penny from a man of religion. Good’s in the worst; and life’s like hunting the squirrel—a man gets much good exercise thereat, but seldom what he hunts for.”
“That’s as good morality as Aristotle’s,” said I. “’Tis better for me, because ’tis mine.” While I tether’d my horse he blew at the embers, wherein lay a good-sized ball of clay, baking. After a while he look’d up with red cheeks. “They were so fast set on drowning me,” he continued with a wink, “they couldn’t spare time to look i’ my pocket—the ruffin cly them!”
He pull’d the clay ball out of the fire, crack’d it, and lo! inside was a hedgehog cook’d, the spikes sticking in the clay, and coming away with it. So he divided the flesh with his knife, and upon a slice of bread from his wallet it made very delicate eating: tho’ I doubt if I enjoyed it as much as did my comrade, who swore over and over that the world was good, and as the wintry sun broke out, and the hot ashes warm’d his knees, began to chatter at a great pace.
“Why, sir, but for the pretty uncertainty of things I’d as lief die here as I sit——”