“There, my man, that will pay for the half apple which you would have kept for yourself.”  The Parson again patted the curly locks, and, after a hearty word or two with the other haymakers, and a friendly “Good day” to Mrs. Fairfield, struck into a path that led toward his own glebe.

He had just crossed the stile, when, he heard hasty but timorous feet behind him.  He turned and saw his friend Lenny.

Lenny, half crying and holding out the sixpence.—­“Indeed, sir, I would rather not.  I would have given all to the Neddy.”

Parson.—­“Why, then, my man, you have a still greater right to the sixpence.”

Lenny.—­“No, sir; ’cause you only gave it to make up for the half apple.  And if I had given the whole, as I ought to have done, why, I should have had no right to the sixpence.  Please, sir, don’t be offended; do take it back, will you?”

The Parson hesitated.  And the boy thrust the sixpence into his hand, as the ass had poked his nose there before in quest of the apple.

“I see,” said Parson Dale, soliloquizing, “that if one don’t give Justice the first place at the table, all the other Virtues eat up her share.”

Indeed, the case was perplexing.  Charity, like a forward impudent baggage as she is, always thrusting herself in the way, and taking other people’s apples to make her own little pie, had defrauded Lenny of his due; and now Susceptibility, who looks like a shy, blush-faced, awkward Virtue in her teens—­but who, nevertheless, is always engaged in picking the pockets of her sisters, tried to filch from him his lawful recompense.  The case was perplexing; for the Parson held Susceptibility in great honor, despite her hypocritical tricks, and did not like to give her a slap in the face, which might frighten her away forever.  So Mr. Dale stood irresolute, glancing from the sixpence to Lenny, and from Lenny to the sixpence.

“Buon giorno—­good day to you,” said a voice behind, in an accent slightly but unmistakably foreign, and a strange-looking figure presented itself at the stile.

Imagine a tall and exceedingly meager man, dressed in a rusty suit of black—­the pantaloons tight at the calf and ancle, and there forming a loose gaiter over thick shoes buckled high at the instep; an old cloak, lined with red, was thrown over one shoulder, though the day was sultry; a quaint, red, outlandish umbrella, with a carved brass handle, was thrust under one arm, though the sky was cloudless; a profusion of raven hair, in waving curls that seemed as fine as silk, escaped from the sides of a straw-hat of prodigious brim; a complexion sallow and swarthy, and features which, though not without considerable beauty to the eye of the artist, were not only unlike what we fair, well-fed, neat-faced Englishmen are wont to consider comely, but exceedingly like what we are disposed to regard as awful and Satanic—­to wit, a long hooked nose, sunken cheeks, black eyes,