it then—which in its accumulation of stagnant
weed, and in its black decomposition, and in all
its foulness and filth, was almost comforting,
regarded as the only water that could have
reflected the shameful place without seeming
polluted by that low office.

Mr. Traveller looked all around him on Tom
Tiddler's ground, and his glance at last
encountered a dusty Tinker lying among the weeds
and rank grass, in the shade of the dwelling-
house. A rough walking-staff lay on the ground
by his side, and his head rested on a small
wallet. He met Mr. Traveller's eye without
lifting up his head, merely depressing his chin a
little (for he was lying on his back) to get a
better view of him.

"Good day!" said Mr. Traveller.

"Same to you, if you like it," returned the
Tinker.

"Don't you like it? It's a very fine day."

"I ain't partickler in weather," returned the
Tinker, with a yawn.

Mr. Traveller had walked up to where he
lay, and was looking down at him. "This is a
curious place," said Mr. Traveller.

"Ay, I suppose so!" returned the Tinker.
"Tom Tiddler's ground, they call this."

"Are you well acquainted with it?"

"Never saw it afore to-day," said the Tinker,
with another yawn, "and don't care if I never
see it again. There was a man here just now,
told me what it was called. If you want to see
Tom himself, you must go in at that gate." He
faintly indicated with his chin, a little mean
ruin of a wooden gate at the side of the house.

"Have you seen Tom?"

"No, and I ain't partickler to see him. I
can see a dirty man anywhere."

"He does not live in the house, then?" said
Mr. Traveller, casting his eyes upon the house
anew.

"The man said," returned the Tinker, rather
irritably,—" him as was here just now,—
'this what you're a lying on, mate, is Tom
Tiddler's ground. And if you want to see Tom,'
he says, 'you must go in at that gate.' The
man come out at that gate himself, and he
ought to know."

"Certainly," said Mr. Traveller.

"Though, perhaps," exclaimed the Tinker, so
struck by the brightness of his own idea,
that it had the electric effect upon him of
causing him to lift up his head an inch or so,
"perhaps he was a liar! He told some rum'uns
—him as was here just now, did—about this
place of Tom's. He says—him as was here
just now—'When Tom shut up the house,
mate, to go to rack, the beds was left, all made,
like as if somebody was a going to sleep in every
bed. And if you was to walk through the
bedrooms now, you'd see the ragged mouldy
bedclothes a heaving and a heaving like seas.
And a heaving and a heaving with what?' he
says. 'Why, with the rats under 'em.'"

"I wish I had seen that man," Mr. Traveller
remarked.

"You'd have been welcome to see him
instead of me seeing him," growled the Tinker;
"for he was a long-winded one."

Not without a sense of injury in the remembrance,
the Tinker gloomily closed his eyes. Mr.
Traveller, deeming the Tinker a short-winded one,
from whom no further breath of information was
to be derived, betook himself to the gate.

Swung upon its rusty hinges, it admitted him
into a yard in which there was nothing to be
seen but an outhouse attached to the ruined
building, with a barred window in it. As there
were traces of many recent footsteps under this
window, and as it was a low window, and
unglazed, Mr. Traveller made bold to peep within
the bars. And there to be sure he had a
real live Hermit before him, and could judge how
the real dead Hermits used to look.

He was lying on a bank of soot and cinders,
on the floor, in front of a rusty fireplace. There
was nothing else in the dark little kitchen, or
scullery, or whatever his den had been originally
used as, but a table with a litter of old bottles
on it. A rat made a clatter among these bottles,
jumped down, and ran over the real live Hermit
on his way to his hole, or the man in his hole
would not have been so easily discernible.
Tickled in the face by the rat's tail, the owner
of Tom Tiddler's ground opened his eyes, saw Mr.
Traveller, started up, and sprang to the window.

"Humph!" thought Mr. Traveller, retiring
a pace or two from the bars. "A compound of
Newgate, Bedlam, a Debtors' Prison in the
worst time, a chimney-sweep, a mudlark, and
the Noble Savage! A nice old family, the
Hermit family. Hah!"

Mr. Traveller thought this, as he silently
confronted the sooty object in the blanket and
skewer (in sober truth it wore nothing else),
with the matted hair and the staring eyes.
Further, Mr. Traveller thought, as the eyes
surveyed him with a very obvious curiosity in
ascertaining the effect they produced, "Vanity,
vanity, vanity! Verily, all is vanity!"

"What is your name, sir, and where do you
come from?" asked Mr. Mopes the Hermit—with
an air of authority, but in the ordinary human
speech of one who has been to school.

Mr. Traveller answered the inquiries.

"Did you come here, sir, to see me?"

"I did. I heard of you, and I came to see
you.—I know you like to be seen." Mr.
Traveller coolly threw the last words in, as a matter
of course, to forestal an affectation of resentment
or objection that he saw rising beneath the
grease and grime of the face. They had their
effect.

"So," said the Hermit, after a momentary
silence, unclasping the bars by which he had
previously held, and seating himself behind them
on the ledge of the window, with his bare legs
and feet crouched up, "you know I like to be
seen?"

Mr. Traveller looked about him for something
to sit on, and, observing a billet of wood in a
corner, brought it near the window. Deliberately
seating himself upon it, he answered:
"Just so."