Now be that matter as you please—­for the point is not worth arguing—­certain it is that my appearance was better than it had been before.  For being in the best clothes, one tries to look and to act (so far as may be) up to the quality of them.  Not only for the fear of soiling them, but that they enlarge a man’s perception of his value.  And it strikes me that our sins arise, partly from disdain of others, but mainly from contempt of self, both working the despite of God.  But men of mind may not be measured by such paltry rule as this.

By dinner-time we arrived at Porlock, and dined with my old friend, Master Pooke, now growing rich and portly.  For though we had plenty of victuals with us we were not to begin upon them, until all chance of victualling among our friends was left behind.  And during that first day we had no need to meddle with our store at all; for as had been settled before we left home, we lay that night at Dunster in the house of a worthy tanner, first cousin to my mother, who received us very cordially, and undertook to return old Smiler to his stable at Plover’s Barrows, after one day’s rest.

Thence we hired to Bridgwater; and from Bridgwater on to Bristowe, breaking the journey between the two.  But although the whole way was so new to me, and such a perpetual source of conflict, that the remembrance still abides with me, as if it were but yesterday, I must not be so long in telling as it was in travelling, or you will wish me farther; both because Lorna was nothing there, and also because a man in our neighbourhood had done the whole of it since my time, and feigns to think nothing of it.  However, one thing, in common justice to a person who has been traduced, I am bound to mention.  And this is, that being two of us, and myself of such magnitude, we never could have made our journey without either fight or running, but for the free pass which dear Annie, by some means (I know not what), had procured from Master Faggus.  And when I let it be known, by some hap, that I was the own cousin of Tom Faggus, and honoured with his society, there was not a house upon the road but was proud to entertain me, in spite of my fellow-traveller, bearing the red badge of the King.

“I will keep this close, my son Jack,” he said, having stripped it off with a carving-knife; “your flag is the best to fly.  The man who starved me on the way down, the same shall feed me fat going home.”

Therefore we pursued our way, in excellent condition, having thriven upon the credit of that very popular highwayman, and being surrounded with regrets that he had left the profession, and sometimes begged to intercede that he might help the road again.  For all the landlords on the road declared that now small ale was drunk, nor much of spirits called for, because the farmers need not prime to meet only common riders, neither were these worth the while to get drunk with afterwards.  Master Stickles himself undertook, as an officer of the King’s Justices to plead this case with Squire Faggus (as everybody called him now), and to induce him, for the general good, to return to his proper ministry.