“You take me?  ‘Merciless,’ madam?”

“I don’t understand a word,” said she, puzzled and angry.

“He was a Scotsman:  and you find it a far cry to Loch Awe.  Well, well—­to resume—­

    “‘Into your garth this day I did pursue—­’”

“by ‘garth’ meaning ‘garden’:  a good word, and why the devil it should be obsolescent is more than I can tell you—­”

But here my father cut him short.  “My good Mrs. Ede,” said he, turning to the woman, “I believe this young man intended no harm to you and very little to your garden.  You are quits with him at any rate.  Take this shilling, step inside, and choose him a fair red rose for the price and also in token of your forgiveness, while he picks up his hat which is lying yonder in the dust.”

“Hey?” The youth started back, for the first time perceiving the badges in our hats.  “Are you too, sirs, of this company of the rose?” His face fell, but with an effort he recovered himself and smiled.

“You are not disappointed, I hope?” inquired my father.

“Why—­to tell you the truth, sir—­I had looked for a rendezvous of careless jolly fellows.  For cavaliers of your quality it never occurred to me to bargain.”  He held up a flap of his ragged coat and shook it ruefully.

My father frowned.  “And I, sir, am disappointed.  A moment since I took you for an original; but it appears you share our common English vice of looking at the world like a lackey.”

“I, sir?” The young man waved a hand.  “I am original?  Give me leave to assure you that this island contains no more servile tradesman.  Why, my lord—­for I take it I speak to a gentleman of title?—­”

“Of the very humblest, sir.  I am a plain knight bachelor.”

The original cringed elaborately, rubbing his hands.  “A title is a title.  Well, sir, as I was about to say, I worship a lord, but my whole soul is bound up in a ledger:  and hence (so to speak) these tears:  hence the disreputable garb in which you behold me.  If I may walk beside you, sir, after this good woman has fetched me the rose—­ thank you, madam—­and provided me with a pin from the chevaux de frise in her bodice—­and again, madam, I thank you:  you wear the very cuirass of matronly virtue—­I should enjoy, sir, to tell you my history.  It is a somewhat curious one.”

“I feel sure, sir”—­my father bowed to him from the saddle—­“it will lose nothing in the telling.”

The young man, having fastened the rose in his hat, bade adieu to his late assailant with a bow; waved a hand to her; lifted his hat a second time; turned after us and, falling into stride by my father’s stirrup, forthwith plunged into his story.

    THE TRAVELS OF PHINEAS FETT.

“My name, sir, is Phineas Fett—­”

He paused.  “I don’t know how it may strike you:  but in my infant ears it ever seemed to forebode something in the Admiralty—­a comfortable post, carrying no fame with it, but moderately lucrative.  In wilder flights my fancy has hovered over the Pipe Office (Addison, sir, was a fine writer; though a bit of a prig, between you and me).”