"Yes, he imposed upon me, too. He is a very clever rogue. A harness-maker by trade, and all his people before him for three hundred years have been of the same calling. So you see the secret of making a black jack has been handed down from father to son. It is one of the traditions of his family; a knowledge which is mingled with his blood and fibre, so to speak. Such skill is older than five thousand years. He has the spirit of the artist—but the soul of the rogue."
"Why," I said, "then if he is a rogue, then I'm a rogue too, for I knew I was paying him a paltry sum for an article I thought to be worth ten pounds—perhaps twenty."
So I laughed, and I've been laughing gloriously ever since—at myself, at the merry rogue in the inn, at the silly old hypocritical world.
As I passed out of the dim old shop and walked down to the sea it came over me, with a sudden feeling of satisfaction in my soul, that the sun shone on Ralph Copplestone just as joyfully as it did on me, that the good God had endowed him with strong arms and a mighty voice for songs.
"After all," I said to myself, "we are all rogues if we are only scratched deep enough."
CHAPTER XII THE DEVON AND DORSET BORDERLAND
"How far is it to Babylon?"
Ah, far enough, my dear,