THE LOST GROCER
PLUMP INTO THE RIVER WE WENT
long tangled grey hair and shaggy beard, clothed in the most pitiable rags, torn, and held together with straw and odd pieces of string. He passed slowly across the bridge, leaning heavily on his staff, and limped with difficulty towards the town, into which with one accord we followed him.
'Down the cobbled high street he walked until he came to the shop of the vanished grocer into which he turned without any hesitation. Wondering what business could take him there, we all hastened to the door of the shop, and there, with the utmost astonishment, beheld the stranger remove his threadbare coat, and replace it with the grocer's moth-eaten apron that had hung for so long from a peg on the door; then he commenced dusting the shop and putting it 206
