“From Carlisle, eh?” said one of the latter, eyeing Reuben from where he sat and speaking with an accent which the little dalesman knew to be “foreign to these parts.”

Reuben assented with a satisfied nod and a screwing up of one cheek into a wrinkle about the eyes.  He was thinking of the good luck of his visit.

“What’s the news there?” asked the other passenger, with an accent which the little dalesman was equally certain was not foreign to these parts.

“Threed’s up a gay penny!” said Reuben.

“Any news at the Castle the day?”

“The Castle?  No—­that’s to say, yes.  I did hear ’at a man had given hissel’ up, but I know nowt aboot it.”

“Do you know his name?”

“No.”

“Be quick in front, my gude man; let’s be off; we’ve lost time enough with the snow already.”

The coachman had mounted to his box, and was wrapping a sheepskin about his knees.

“What’s that you have there?” he said to Reuben.

“Him?  Why, that’s Robbie Anderson, poor fellow.  One o’ them lads, thoo knows, that have no mair nor one enemy in all the world, and that’s theirselves.”

“Out for a spoag, eh?”

“Come, get along, man, and let’s have no more botherment,” cried one of the impatient passengers.

Two or three miles farther down the road Reuben was holding in his horse, in order to cross a river, when he thought that, in the comparative silence of his springless wagon, he heard Robbie speaking behind him.

“It’s donky weather, this,” Robbie was saying.

“Ey, wet and sladderish,” said Reuben, in an insinuating tone, “baith inside and out, baith under foot and ower head.”

“It was north of the bridge,” Robbie whispered.

“What were—­Carlisle?” asked Reuben in his most facetious vein.

“It blows a bit on the Stye Head to-day, Ralph.  The way’s ower narrow.  I can never chain the young horse.  Steady, Betsy; steady, lass; steady—­”

“Why, the lad’s ram’lin’,” said Reuben to himself.

“It was fifty strides north of the bridge,” Robbie whispered again; and then lifting his voice he cried, “She’s gone; she’s gone.”

“He’s ram’lin’ for sure.”

The truth now dawned on Reuben that on the present occasion at least Robbie was not drunk, but sick.  With the illogical perversity of some healthy people, he thought to rally the ailing man out of his ailment, whatever it might be; so he expended all the facetiousness of which he was master on Robbie’s unconscious figure.

Reuben’s well-meant efforts were of no avail.  Robbie alternately whispered, “It was north of the bridge,” and chuckled, “Ah, ah! there’s Garth, Garth—­but I downed him, the dummel head!”

The little dalesman relinquished as hopeless all further attempt at rational converse, and gave himself the solemn assurance, conveyed to his acute intelligence by many grave shakes of the head, that “summat was ailin’ the lad, after all.”