Each looked at the other, and each appeared
to take some pains to get the measure of the
other.

"Then you have come to ask me why I lead
this life," said the Hermit, frowning in a stormy
manner. "I never tell that to any human being.
I will not be asked that."

"Certainly you will not be asked that by
me," said Mr. Traveller, "for I have not the
slightest desire to know."

"You are an uncouth man," said Mr. Mopes
the Hermit.

"You are another," said Mr. Traveller.

The Hermit, who was plainly in the habit of
overawing his visitors with the novelty of his
filth and his blanket and skewer, glared at
his present visitor in some discomfiture and
surprise: as if he had taken aim at him with a sure
gun, and his piece had missed fire.

"Why do you come here at all?" he asked,
after a pause.

"Upon my life," said Mr. Traveller, "I was
made to ask myself that very question only a few
minutes ago—by a Tinker too."

As he glanced towards the gate in saying it,
the hermit glanced in that direction likewise.

"Yes. He is lying on his back in the
sunlight outside," said Mr. Traveller, as if he had
been asked concerning the man, "and he won't
come in; for he says—and really very reasonably
—'What should I come in for? I can see
a dirty man anywhere.'"

"You are an insolent person. Go away from
my premises. Go!" said the Hermit, in an
imperious and angry tone.

"Come, come!" returned Mr. Traveller, quite
undisturbed. "This is a little  too much. You
are not going to call yourself clean? Look at
your legs. And as to these being your
premises:—they are in far too disgraceful a condition
to claim any privilege of ownership, or
anything else."

The Hermit bounced down from his window-
ledge, and cast himself on his bed of soot and
cinders.

"I am not going," said Mr. Traveller, glancing
in after him: "you won't get rid of me in that
way. You had better come and talk."

"I won't talk," said the Hermit, flouncing
round to get his back towards the window.

"Then I will," said Mr. Traveller. "Why
should you take it ill that I have no curiosity to
know why you live this highly absurd and
highly indecent life? When I contemplate a
man in a state of disease, surely there is no moral
obligation on me to be anxious to know how
he took it."

After a short silence, the Hermit bounced up
again, and came back to the barred window.

"What? You are not gone?" he said, affecting
to have supposed that he was.

"Nor going," Mr. Traveller replied: "I
design to pass this summer day here."

"How dare you come, sir, upon my
premises—-" the Hermit was returning, when
his visitor interrupted him.

"Really, you know, you must not talk about
your premises. I cannot allow such a place
as this to be dignified with the name of
premises."

"How dare you," said the Hermit, shaking
his bars, "come in at my gate, to taunt me
with being in a diseased state?"

"Why, Lord bless my soul," returned the
other, very composedly, "you have not the face
to say that you are in a wholesome state? Do
allow me again to call your attention to your legs.
Scrape yourself anywhere—with anything—
and then tell me you are in a wholesome state.
The fact is, Mr. Mopes, that you are not only
a Nuisance—-"

"A Nuisance?" repeated the Hermit, fiercely.

"What is a place in this obscene state of
dilapidation but a Nuisance? What is a man in
your obscene state of dilapidation but a
Nuisance? Then, as you very well know, you
cannot do without an audience, and your audience
is a Nuisance. You attract all the disreputable
vagabonds and prowlers within ten miles round,
by exhibiting yourself to them in that
objectionable blanket, and by throwing copper
money among them, and giving them drink out
of those very dirty jars and bottles that I see in
there (their stomachs need be strong!); and in
short," said Mr. Traveller, summing up in a
quietly and comfortably settled manner, "you
are a Nuisance, and this kennel is a Nuisance,
and the audience that you cannot possibly
dispense with is a Nuisance, and the Nuisance is
not merely a local Nuisance, because it is a
general Nuisance to know that there can be
such a Nuisance left in civilisation so very long
after its time."

"Will you go away? I have a gun in here,"
said the Hermit.

"Pooh!"

"I have!"

"Now, I put it to you. Did I say you
had not? And as to going away, didn't I say I
am not going away? You have made me forget
where I was. I now remember that I was
remarking on your conduct being a Nuisance.
Moreover, it is in the last and lowest degree
inconsequent foolishness and weakness."

"Weakness?" echoed the Hermit.

"Weakness," said Mr. Traveller, with his
former comfortably settled final air.

"I weak, you fool?" cried the Hermit, "I,
who have held to my purpose, and my diet, and
my only bed there, all these years?"

"The more the years, the weaker you,"
returned Mr. Traveller. "Though the years are
not so many as folks say, and as you willingly
take credit for. The crust upon your face is
thick and dark, Mr. Mopes, but I can see
enough of you through it, to see that you are
still a young man."

"Inconsequent foolishness is lunacy, I
suppose?" said the Hermit.

"I suppose it is very like it," answered Mr.
Traveller.

"Do I converse like a lunatic?"

"One of us two must have a strong
presumption against him of being one, whether or