"This then is the reason of your solitude?"
"It is; and so far is this superstitious fear of contamination carried in this country, that your citizen considers himself defiled if by chance he has eaten out of the same plate that a headsman has once used. Accordingly all vendors of crockery have orders to knock a chip out of every earthen vessel that they sell to the headsman."
"Dear me!" exclaimed my ancestor, "what a peculiar custom! I never heard that before. I certainly did remark that your crockery was in a most dilapidated state, but I didn't consider the remark worth making, although more than once in the course of the evening I felt inclined to ask you how on earth you contrived to knock out chips of such a peculiar shape by mere accident."
"Ah!" sighed the headsman, "what between the crockery-seller and——"
Here he put his finger to his lip and looked round the room suspiciously.
"What is the matter?" asked the student.
"Hush!" said the headsman, "it isn't always safe to talk of mischievous people—they are apt to appear. You know the saying, 'Talk of the devil.'"
"Well," said my ancestor, "but what has that to do with your broken crockery?"
"Hush!" answered his host, looking round him half-timidly; then whispered, "I have a certain mischievous lodger that does my crockery more harm than either the crockery-seller or my boy upstairs when he's fractious."
"Ah!" exclaimed the traveller in surprise, "you have a lodger in your house?"