136 POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OP
women, and 1 boldly declare he is not a man." And Mr. Snodgrass took his cig-ar from his mouth, and struck the table violently with his clenched fist.
" That's good sound argument," said the placid man.
" Containing a position which I deny," interrupted he of the dirty countenance.
" And there's certainly a very great deal of truth in what you observe too, Sir," said the placid gentleman.
" Your health. Sir," said the bagman with the lonely eye, bestowing' an approving nod on Mr. Snodgrass.
Mr. Snodgrass acknowledged the compliment.
" I always like to hear a good argument," continued the bagman, " a sharp one, like this ; it's very improving ; but this little argument about women brought to my mind a story I have heard an old uncle of mine tell, the recollection of which, just now, made me say there were rummer things than women to be met with, sometimes."
" I should like to hear that same story," said tho red-faced man with the cigar.
- ' Should you?" was the only reply of the bagman, who continued to
smoke with great vehemence.
'* So should I," said Mr. Tupman, speaking for the first time. He was always anxious to increase his stock of experience.
" Should you ? Well then, I'll tell it. No I won't. I know you won't believe it/' said the man with the roguish eye, making that organ look more roguish than ever.
- ^ If you say it's true, of course I shall," said Mr. Tupman.
" Well, upon that understanding I'll tell it," replied the traveller.
- ' Did you ever hear of the great commercial house of Bilson and
Slum ? But it doesn't matter though, whether you did or not, because they retired from business long since. It's eighty years ago, since the circumstance happened to a traveller for that house, but he was a par- ticular friend of my uncle's : and my uncle told the story to me. It's a queer name ; but he used to call it
THE bagman's story,
and he used to tell it, something in this way.
- ' One winter's evening, about five o'clock, just as it began to grow
dusk, a man in a gig might have been seen urging his tired horse along the road which leads across Marlborough Downs, in the direction of Bristol. I say he might have been seen, and I have no doubt he would have been, if anybody but a blind man had happened to pass that way ; but the weather was so bad, and the night so cold and wet, that nothing w^as out but the water, and so the traveller jogged along in the middle of the road, lonesome and dreary enough, ff any bagman of that day could have caught sight of the little neck-or-nothing sort of gig, with a clay-coloured body and red wheels, and the vixenish ill- tempered, fast-going bay mare, that looked like a cross between a butcher's horse and a twopenny post-office pony, he would have known at once, that this traveller could have been no other than Tom
