She laid before me an excellent supper on a little table somewhat removed beside a curtained window.  And while I ate I watched, and listened, not at all displeased with my entertainment.

The room in which we sat was low-ceiled and cheerful, but rather close after the rainy night-air.  Gay pictures beautified the walls.  Here a bottle, a cheese, grapes, a hare, a goblet—­in a clear brown light that made the guest’s mouth water to admire.  Here a fine gentleman toasting a simpering chambermaid.  Above the chimney-piece a bloated old man in vineleaves that might be Silenus.  And over against the door of the parlour what I took to be a picture of Potiphar’s wife, she looked out of the paint so bold and beauteous and craftily.  Birds and fishes in cases stared glassily,—­owl and kestrel, jack and eel and gudgeon.  All was clean and comfortable as a hospitable inn can be.

But they who frequented it interested me much more—­as various and animated a gathering as any I have seen.  Yet in some peculiar manner they seemed one and all not to the last tittle quite of this world.  They were, so to speak, more earthy, too definite, too true to the mould, like figures in a bleak, bright light viewed out of darkness.  Certainly not one of them was at first blush prepossessing.  Yet who finds much amiss with the fox at last, though all he seems to have be cunning?

Near beside me, however, sat retired a man a little younger and more at his ease than most of the many there, and as busy with his eyes and ears as I. His name, I learned presently, was Reverie; and from him I gathered not a little information regarding the persons who talked and sipped around us.

He told me at whiles that his house was not in the village, but in a valley some few miles distant across the meadows; that he sat out these bouts of argument and slander for the sheer delight he had in gathering the myriad strands of that strange rope Opinion; that he lived (heart, soul, and hope) well-nigh alone; that he deeply mistrusted this place, and the company we were in, yet not for its mistress’s sake, who was at least faithful to her instincts, candid to the candid, made no favourites, and, eventually, compelled order.  He told me also that if friends he had, he deemed it wiser not to name them, since the least sibilant of the sound of the voice incites to treachery; and in conclusion, that of all men he was acquainted with, one at least never failed to right his humour; and that one was yonder flabby, pallid fellow with the velvet collar to his coat, and the rings on his fingers, and the gold hair, named Pliable, who sat beside Mr. Stubborn on the settle by the fire.

When, then, I had finished my supper, I drew in my chair a little closer to Mr. Reverie’s and, having scribbled my wants on the Landlady’s slate, turned my attention to the talk.

At the moment when I first began to listen attentively they seemed to be in heated dispute concerning the personal property of a certain Mr. Christian, who was either dead or had inexplicably disappeared.  Mr. Obstinate, I gathered, had taken as his right this Christian’s “easy-chair”; a gentleman named Smoothman most of his other goods for a debt; while a Parson Decorum had appropriated as heretical his books and various peculiar MSS.