CHAPTER I.
A way-side hostelry, six miles from London, bearing its swinging sign of the silver hawk and golden heron. It was a little, low-roofed place, with a drinking-bar in front as you entered, and rooms opening from it on either hand.
The door of the room to the left was shut. One could hear the voices of children within, and sometimes a peal of their merry laughter. The room to the right stood open to the bar. It was a smoky place, with a few chairs, a long deal table, a bench with a back, a form against the wall, pipes that hung on nails, and a rough beam across the low ceiling.
A big fire burned in an open grate on a hearth without a fender. In front of it, coiled up in a huge chair like a canoe, that had a look of having been hewn straight from the tree, sat the only occupant of the room. The man wore a tweed suit of the indefinite pattern known as pepper and salt. His hat was drawn heavily over his face to protect his eyes from the glare of the fire-light. He gave satisfactory evidence that he slept.
Under any light but that of the fire, the place must have looked cheerless to desolation, but the comfortless room was alive with the fire's palpitating heart. The rosy flames danced over the sleeper's tawny hair, over the sanded floor, over the walls adorned with gaudy prints. They threw shadows and then caught them back again; flashed a ruddy face out of the little cracked window, and then lay still while the blue night looked in.
An old woman, with a yellow face deeply wrinkled, served behind the bar. Two or three carriers and hawkers sat on a bench before it. One of these worthies screwed up the right side of his face with an expression of cutting irony.
"Burn my body, though, but what an inwalable thing to have a son wot never need do no work!"
The old woman lifted her eyes.
"There, enough of that," she said, and then jerked her head toward the room from whence came measured snores. "He'll be working at throwing you out, some of you, same as he did young Bobby on Sunday sennight."