“I browt th’ beer for yo’,” said Paul.

“You did.  It was the worst beer, bar none, I’ve ever had.  I can taste it now.”  He made a wry face.  Then he cocked his head on one side.  “I suppose you’re wondering who I am?” said he.

“Ay,” said Paul.  “Who art tha?”

“I’m Barney Bill,” replied the man.  “Did you never hear of me?  I’m known on the road from Taunton to Newcastle and from Hereford to Lowestoft.  You can tell yer mother that you seed me.”

A smile curled round Paul’s lips at the comic idea of giving his mother unsolicited information.  “Barney Bill?” said he.

“Yuss,” said the man.  Then, after a pause, “What are you doing of there?”

“Reading,” said Paul.

“Let’s have a look at it.”

Paul regarded him suspiciously; but there was kindliness in the twinkling glance.  He handed him the sorry apology for a book.

Barney Bill turned it over.  ’Why, said he, “it ain’t got no beginning and no end.  It’s all middle.  ‘Kenilworth.’  Do yer like it?”

“Ay!” said Paul.  “It’s foine.”

“Who do yer think wrote it?”

As both cover and a hundred pages at the beginning, including the title-page, to say nothing of a hundred pages at the end, were missing, Paul had no clue to the authorship.

“Dunno,” said he.

“Sir Walter Scott.”

Paul jumped to his feet.  Sir Walter Scott, he knew not why or how, was one of those bright names that starred in his historical darkness, like Caesar and Napoleon and Ridley and Latimer and W. G. Grace.

“Tha’ art sure?  Sir Water Scott?”

The shock of meeting Sir Walter in the flesh could not have been greater.  The man nodded.  “Think I’d tell yer a lie?  I do a bit of reading myself in the old ’bus there"-he jerked a thumb—­“I’ve got some books now.  Would yer like to see ’em?”

Would a mouse like cheese?  Paul started off with his new companion.

“If it wasn’t for a book or two, I’d go melancholy mad and bust myself,” the latter remarked.

Paul’s spirit leaped toward a spiritual brother.  It was precisely his own case.

“You’ll find a lot of chaps that don’t hold with books.  Dessay you’ve met ’em?”

Paul laughed, precipient of irony.

Barney Bill continued:  “I’ve heard some on ’em say:  ’What’s the good of books?  Give me nature,’ and they goes and asks for it at the public-’ouse.  Most say nothing at all, but just booze.”

“Like father,” said Paul.

“Eh?” cried his friend sharply.

“Sam Button, what married mother.”

“Ali! so he boozes a lot, does he?”

Paul drew an impressionistic and lurid picture of Mr. Button.

“And they fight?”

“Like billy-o,” said Paul.