"'Oh! a gent are you?' he said, with a sneer; 'then, by ——, fork out like a gent;' and he seized me by the coat collar.
"And now, for the first time, I found I had been taught at school something that was useful. Throwing off his hand, I leapt back, and put myself in a boxing attitude; and, as he made a furious assault upon me, I parried his blows, and letting go my left straight from the shoulder, landed on his jaw a crashing blow which sent him to the grass; and there he lay half-stunned, and looking like a heap of filthy clothes. I asked him if he would have any more, and getting nothing but a terrible imprecation in reply, I left him, and went on my way.
"By this time I had passed Newark, and I was in a sorry plight. I was without shoes and without a waistcoat, and my hat was crushed and battered out of all shape. With bleeding feet and empty stomach, I was limping along painfully, when I came to a farmer superintending his reapers near the roadside. Touching my forehead, I asked him if he could not give a starving man a job by which he could earn a bite of bread.
"'No lad,' he said, 'but if ye had coomed when the taters were young I could have given you a job. I might have employed you as a scarecrow.'
"Thereupon all the workers laughed, especially the women, who sent up a loud skirl of delight. So I had to crawl on, foot-sore, and also heart-sore at the cruelty of my fellow-creatures.
"But relief was at hand. I had not gone far, when, turning a corner of the road, I came upon a strange sight: a fat little man, with a red coat, and a red face, both discoloured by the weather, sitting at the edge of a wood, eating his dinner, with his little dog in front of him, and his properties—a Punch and Judy show, a big drum, and Pandean pipes—indistinctly seen in the foliage behind him. He was eating bread and cheese, which he cut with a clasp-knife, and Toby was eyeing him greedily, ready to snap his occasional bit. Everything about the man was so hearty, and so suggestive of sunshine and country roads, that he seemed to warm up the landscape.
"As soon as he caught sight of me he called out, 'Hallo, mate! you seem done up. Come and peck a bit. Sit down.' And he handed me a big hunk of bread and another of cheese, looking on beamingly when I devoured it; and when at length I could eat no more, he produced a flask.
"'Here is some of the right sort; take a good swig of it; it will oil your digestion works. Man! it does me good to see you enjoy your grub. I feel as if I were eating a second dinner. Now for your yarn.' Then he lit his pipe and smoked while I gave an account of myself.
"'Ah,' he said, knocking out the ashes, 'my case is not altogether unlike yours. I, too, got a good education, or what was intended to be a good education. But I could never settle in any place. By nature I was a rolling stone, or rather a rolling ball of fat; and Fortune, mistaking me for a football, began to kick me about, and has been playing with me ever since. But thanks to my fat, I always fall soft and always rebound. Ha! ha!' and he laughed till his face puckered up and showed his eyes like two small steel beads.
"While he was talking, I had taken up the Pandean pipes, and I now played a tune on them.