He appeared not to notice me, but pricked leisurably down the slope, and I soon saw that, as our paths ran and at the pace we were going, we should meet at the foot of the descent:  which we presently did.

“Ah, indeed!” said the stranger, reining in his pony as though now for the first time aware of me:  “I wish you a very good day, sir.  We are well met.”

He pulled off his hat with a fantastic politeness.  For me, my astonishment grew as I regarded him more closely.  A mass of lanky, white hair drooped on either side of a face pale, pinched, and extraordinarily wrinkled; the clothes that wrapped his diminutive body were threadbare, greasy, and patched in all directions.  Fifty years’ wear could not have worsened them; and, indeed, from the whole aspect of the man, you might guess him a century old, were it not for the nimbleness of his gestures and his eyes, which were grey, alert, and keen as needles.

I acknowledged his salutation as he ranged up beside me.

“Will my company, sir, offend you?  By your coat I suspect your trade:  venatorem sapit—­hey?”

His voice exactly fitted his eyes.  Both were sharp and charged with expression; yet both carried also a hint that their owner had lived long in privacy.  Somehow they lacked touch.

“I am riding homewards,” I answered.

“Hey?  Where is that?”

The familiarity lay rather in the words than the manner; and I did not resent it.

“At Bleakirk.”

His eyes had wandered for a moment to the road ahead; but now he turned abruptly, and looked at me, as I thought, with some suspicion.  He seemed about to speak, but restrained himself, fumbled in his waistcoat pocket, and producing a massive snuff-box, offered me a pinch.  On my declining, he helped himself copiously; and then, letting the reins hang loose upon his arm, fell to tapping the box.

“To me this form of the herb nicotiana commends itself by its cheapness:  the sense is tickled, the purse consenting—­like the complaisant husband in Juvenal:  you take me?  I am well acquainted with Bleakirk-super-sabulum.  By the way, how is Squire Cartwright of the Hall?”

“If,” said I, “you mean my father, Angus Cartwright, he is dead these twelve years.”

“Hey?” cried the old gentleman, and added after a moment, “Ah, to be sure, time flies—­quo dives Tullus et—­Angus, eh?  And yet a hearty man, to all seeming.  So you are his son.”  He took another pinch.  “It is very sustaining,” he said.

“The snuff?”

“You have construed me, sir.  Since I set out, just thirteen hours since, it has been my sole viaticum.”  As he spoke he put his hand nervously to his forehead, and withdrew it.