‘What hill is that?’ I demanded.

And then Mr. Petulengro told me the name of the hill.  ’We shall stay on t’other side of the hill a fortnight,’ he continued; ’and, as you are fond of lil-writing, you may employ yourself profitably whilst there.  You can write the lil of him whose dock gallops down that hill every night, even as the living man was wont to do long ago.’

‘Who was he?’ I demanded.

‘Jemmy Abershaw,’ said Mr. Petulengro; ’one of those whom we call Boro drom engroes, and the gorgios highway-men.  I once heard a rye say that the life of that man would fetch much money; so come to the other side of the hill, and write the lil in the tent of Jasper and his wife Pakomovna.’

{picture:’Even as the living man was wont to do long ago.’:  page307.jpg}

At first I felt inclined to accept the invitation of Mr. Petulengro; a little consideration, however, determined me to decline it.  I had always been on excellent terms with Mr. Petulengro, but I reflected that people might be excellent friends when they met occasionally in the street, or on the heath, or in the wood; but that these very people when living together in a house, to say nothing of a tent, might quarrel.  I reflected, moreover, that Mr. Petulengro had a wife.  I had always, it is true, been a great favourite with Mrs. Petulengro, who had frequently been loud in her commendation of the young rye, as she called me, and his turn of conversation; but this was at a time when I stood in need of nothing, lived under my parents’ roof, and only visited at the tents to divert and to be diverted.  The times were altered, and I was by no means certain that Mrs. Petulengro, when she should discover that I was in need both of shelter and subsistence, might not alter her opinion both with respect to the individual and what he said—­stigmatising my conversation as saucy discourse, and myself as a scurvy companion; and that she might bring over her husband to her own way of thinking, provided, indeed, he should need any conducting.  I therefore, though without declaring my reasons, declined the offer of Mr. Petulengro, and presently, after shaking him by the hand, bent again my course towards the Great City.

I crossed the river at a bridge considerably above that hight of London; for, not being acquainted with the way, I missed the turning which should have brought me to the latter.  Suddenly I found myself in a street of which I had some recollection, and mechanically stopped before the window of a shop at which various publications were exposed; it was that of the bookseller to whom I had last applied in the hope of selling my ballads or Ab Gwilym, and who had given me hopes that, in the event of my writing a decent novel, or a tale, he would prove a purchaser.  As I stood listlessly looking at the window, and the publications which it contained, I observed a paper affixed to the glass by wafers with something written upon it.  I drew yet nearer for the purpose of inspecting it; the writing was in a fair round hand—­’A Novel or Tale is much wanted,’ was what was written.