At that moment the exciseman passed by them on horseback. He raised his hat to Joan, and looked with some curiosity at Hieronymus. Joan colored. She remembered that she had not behaved kindly to him yesterday; and after all, he was David, David who had always been good to her, ever since she could remember. "Who was that?" asked Hieronymus. "What a trim, nice-looking man!" "He is David Ellis, the exciseman," Joan said, half reluctantly. "I wonder when he is going to test the beer at the Green Dragon," said the historian anxiously. "I wouldn’t miss that for anything. Will you ask him?" Joan hesitated. Then she hastened on a few steps, and called "David!" David turned in his saddle, and brought his horse to a standstill. He wondered what Joan would have to say to him. "When are you going to test the beer at the Green Dragon?" she asked. "Some time this afternoon," he answered. "Why do you want to know?" "The gentleman who is staying at the inn wants to know," Joan said. "Is that all you have to say to me?" David asked quietly. "No," said Joan, looking up at him. "There is something more: about the pastry--" But just then Hieronymus had joined them. "If you’re talking about pastry," he said cheerily, "I never tasted any better than Miss Hammond’s. I ate a dishful this morning!" The exciseman looked at Joan, and at the historian. "Yes," he said, as he cracked his whip, "it tastes good to those who can get it, and it tastes bad to those who can’t get it." And with that he galloped away, leaving Joan confused, and Hieronymus mystified. He glanced at his companion, and seemed to expect that she would explain the situation; but as she did not attempt to do so he walked quietly along with her until they came to the short cut which led back to the Green Dragon. There he parted from her, making an arrangement that she should come and write for him on the morrow. But as he strolled home he said to himself, "I am much afraid that I have been eating some one else’s pastry! Well, it was very good, especially the jam-puffs!" *CHAPTER VI.* *THE EXCISEMAN’S LIBRARY.* David Ellis did not feel genially disposed toward the historian; and yet when he stood in the kitchen of the Green Dragon, testing the new brew, and saw Hieronymus eagerly watching the process, he could not but be amused. There was something about Hieronymus which was altogether irresistible. He had a power, quite unconscious to himself, of drawing people over to his side. And yet he never tried to win; he was just himself, nothing more and nothing less. "I am not wishing to pry into the secrets of the profession," he said to David Ellis; "but I do like to see how everything is done." The exciseman good-naturedly taught him how to test the strength of the beer, and Hieronymus was as pleased as though he had learned some great secret of the universe, or unearthed some long-forgotten fact in history.