"An impudent, careless, ruffianly fellow, indeed!" said the mild Hartopp, indignantly, as he brushed from his sleeve the splash of dirt which the horseman bequeathed to it. "He must be drunk!"
The rider, gaining the bridge, was there detained at the toll-bar by some carts and wagons; and the two gentlemen passed him on the bridge, looking with some attention at his gloomy, unobservant countenance, and the powerful frame on which, despite coarse garments and the change wrought by years of intemperate excess, was still visible the trace of that felicitous symmetry once so admirably combining Herculean strength with elastic elegance. Entering the town, the rider turned into the yard of the nearest inn. George Morley and Hartopp, followed at a little distance by Morley's traveling companion, Merle, passed on toward the other extremity of the town, and after one or two inquiries for "Widow Halse, Prospect Row," they came to a few detached cottages, very prettily situated on a gentle hill, commanding in front the roofs of the city and the gleaming windows of the great cathedral, with somewhat large gardens in the rear. Mrs. Halse's dwelling was at the extreme end of this Row. The house, however, was shut up; and a woman, who was standing at the door of the neighboring cottage, plaiting straw, informed the visitors that Mrs. Halse was gone out "charing" for the day, and that her lodger, who had his own key, seldom returned before dark, but that at that hour he was pretty sure to be found in the Corn-market or the streets in its vicinity, and offered to send her little boy to discover and "fetch" him. George consulted apart with Merle, and decided on dispatching the cobbler, with the boy for his guide, in quest of the peddler, Merle being of course instructed not to let out by whom he was accompanied, lest Waife in his obstinacy, should rather abscond than encounter the friends from whom he had fled. Merle, and a curly-headed urchin, who seemed delighted at the idea of hunting up Sir Isaac and Sir Isaac's master, set forth and were soon out of sight. Hartopp and George opened the little garden gate, and strolled into the garden at the back of the cottage, to seat themselves patiently on a bench beneath an old apple-tree. Here they waited and conversed some minutes, till George observed that one of the casements on that side of the cottage was left open, and, involuntarily rising, he looked in; surveying with interest the room, which, he felt sure at the first glance, must be that occupied by his self-exiled friend: a neat, pleasant little room—a bullfinch in a wicket cage on a ledge within the casement—a flower-pot beside it. Doubtless the window,
