"Why, for that reason. It's unreasonably virtuous. In particular there is a certain magistrate in the neighbourhood, who hangs his 12 men per annum: and why? For no other cause on God's earth than because their blood is hotter than his own. He has his bloodhounds for tracking them, and his spies for trepanning; and all the old women say that he can read in the stars, and in coffee grounds, where contraband goods come ashore."
"Why, my pleasant friend, what is it you take me for?"
The stranger turned round; pressed his companion's hand; but, not finding the pressure returned, he laughed and said in a significant tone:
"Take him for? I take the gentleman to be as respectable and honourable a gentleman as any that----frequents the highway by night. You are come from abroad: at school you had read flattering accounts of this famous kingdom of England and its inhabitants; and, desiring to see all this fine vision realized, you did not let the distance frighten you. And to a young man, I take it, that is some little credit."
"Well, Sir, well?"
"Before you left home, your purse had been emptied at some watering place, we'll say by gamblers, sharpers, black legs, &c.; but no matter how: there are many ways of emptying a purse; and you are now come over to our rich old England to devise means for filling it again. All right. He, that loses his money at one sort of game, must try to draw it back by some other: and in England there are many. One man marries a rich heiress: another quacks: another opens a tabernacle, and wheedles himself into old women's wills. But perhaps the best way of all is to go into trade, break, take the benefit of the Insolvent Act, and in short get famously ruined; in which case you're made for life."
"So then you do really take me to be an adventurer--a fortune-hunter?"
"Oh, Sir, God forbid I should take a man for any thing that it is not agreeable to him to be taken for; or should call him by any name which he thinks uncivil. But the last name, I think, is civil enough: for I suppose every man is a fortune-hunter in this world. Some there are now that hunt their fortunes through quiet paths where there is little risk and much profit: others again" (and here he lost his tranquil tone, and his self-possession) "others hunt a little profit through much danger, choosing rather to be in eternal strife and to put their hopes daily to hazard than to creep and crawl and sneak and grovel: and at last perhaps they venture into a chase where there is no profit at all--or where the best upshot will be that some dozen of hollow, smiling, fawning scoundrels, who sin according to act of parliament, and therefore are within the protection of parliament, may be----"
He paused suddenly, and made a fierce gesture which supplied the ellipsis to his companion: but the latter had little wish to pursue such a theme, and he diverted the conversation into another channel, resuming a topic which had been once broken off:
"I have come to Wales," said Bertram, "chiefly from the interest I take in its traditions, antiquities, and literature. The ruined monuments of so ancient a people, that maintained its independence so long and so heroically against enemies so potent, have a powerful interest to my mind when connected with their grand historical remembrances. The great architectural relics of older times,--the castles of Aberconway, Caernarvon, Harlech, and Kilgarran"----