At this moment I was interrupted in a rather singular fashion, for hearing a rustling close by, I looked up, and into a face that was protruded through a gap in the hedge above me.
It needed but a glance at the battered hat with its jaunty brim, and great silver buckle, and the haggard, devil-may-care face below, to recognize the individual whom I had seen thrown out of the hedge tavern the morning before.
It was a very thin face, as I have said, pale and hollow-eyed and framed in black curly hair, whose very blackness did but accentuate the extreme pallor of the skin, which was tight, and drawn above the cheek bones and angle of the jaw. Yet, as I looked at this face, worn and cadaverous though it was, in the glance of the hollow eyes, in the line of the clean-cut mouth I saw that mysterious something which marks a man, what we call for want of a better word, a gentleman.
"Good evening!" said he, and lifted the battered hat.
"Good evening!" I returned.
"Pardon me," said he, "but I was saluting the bread and cheese."
"Indeed!" said I.
"Indeed!" he rejoined, "it is the first edible I have been on speaking terms with, so to speak, for rather more than three days, sir."
"You are probably hungry?" said I.
"It would be foolish to deny it, sir."