’Ladies and gentlemen of Bursley, this enlightened and beautiful town which I am now visiting for the first time,’ he began in a hard, metallic voice, employing again with the glib accuracy of a machine the exact phrases which he had been using all day, ’look at me—­look well at me.  How old do you think I am?  How old do I seem?  Twenty, my dear, do you say?’ and he turned with practised insolence to a pot-girl in a red shawl who could not have uttered an audible word to save her soul, but who blushed and giggled with pleasure at this mark of attention.  ’Ah! you flatter, fair maiden!  I look more than twenty, but I think I may say that I do not look thirty.  Does any lady or gentleman think I look thirty?  No!  As a matter of fact, I was twenty-nine years of age when, in South America, while exploring the ruins of the most ancient civilization of the world—­of the world, ladies and gentlemen—­I made my wonderful discovery, the Elixir of Youth!’

‘What art blethering at, Licksy?’ a drunken man called from the back of the crowd, and the nickname stuck to the great discoverer during the rest of the Wakes.

‘That, ladies and gentlemen,’ the Inca of Peru continued unperturbed, ’was—­seventy-two years ago.  I am now a hundred and one years old precisely, and as fresh as a kitten, all along of my marvellous elixir.  Far older, for instance, than this good dame here.’

He pointed to an aged and wrinkled woman, in blue cotton and a white mutch, who was placidly smoking a short cutty.  This creature, bowed and satiate with monotonous years, took the pipe from her indrawn lips, and asked in a weary, trembling falsetto: 

‘How many wives hast had?’

‘Seventane,’ the Inca retorted quickly, dropping at once into broad dialect, ‘and now lone and lookin’ to wed again.  Wilt have me?’

‘Nay,’ replied the crone.  ‘I’ve buried four mysen, and no man o’ mine shall bury me.’

There was a burst of laughter, amid which the Inca, taking the crowd archly into his confidence, remarked: 

’I’ve never administered my elixir to any of my wives, ladies and gentlemen.  You may blame me, but I freely confess the fact;’ and he winked.

‘Licksy!  Licksy!’ the drunken man idiotically chanted.

‘And now,’ the Inca proceeded, coming at length to the practical part of his ovation, ‘see here!’ With the rapidity of a conjurer he whipped from his pocket a small bottle, and held it up before the increasing audience.  It contained a reddish fluid, which shone bright and rich in the sunlight.  ‘See here!’ he cried magnificently, but he was destined to interruption.

A sudden cry arose of ’Black Jack!  Black Jack!  ‘Tis him!  He’s caught!’ And the Inca’s crowd, together with all the other crowds filling the market-place, surged off eastward in a dense, struggling mass.