I asked him if he was married.
“No, signore; but my brother in Liverpool is.”
“To an Italian?”
“No, signore; to a Welsh girl.”
“And I suppose,” said I, “you will follow his example by marrying one; perhaps that good-looking girl the landlady’s daughter we were seated with last night?”
“No, signore; I shall not follow my brother’s example. If ever I take a wife she shall be of my own village, in Como, whither I hope to return, as soon as I have picked up a few more pounds.”
“Whether the Austrians are driven away or not?” said I.
“Whether the Austrians are driven away or not—for to my mind there is no country like Como, signore.”
I ordered breakfast; whilst taking it in the room above I saw through the open window the Italian trudging forth on his journey, a huge box on his back, and a weather-glass in his hand—looking the exact image of one of those men his country people, whom forty years before I had known at N. I thought of the course of time, sighed and felt a tear gather in my eye.
My breakfast concluded, I paid my bill, and after inquiring the way to Bangor, and bidding adieu to the kind landlady and her daughter, set out from Cerrig y Drudion. My course lay west, across a flat country, bounded in the far distance by the mighty hills I had seen on the preceding evening. After walking about a mile I overtook a man with a game leg, that is a leg, which either by nature or accident not being so long as its brother leg, had a patten attached to it, about five inches high, to enable it to do duty with the other—he was a fellow with red shock hair and very red features, and was dressed in ragged coat and breeches, and a hat which had lost part of its crown, and all its rim, so that even without a game leg he would have looked rather a queer figure. In his hand he carried a fiddle.