"But I do say so," said Gubblum, with many shakes of his big head. Let any facetious young gentleman who supposed that it was possible to make sport of him, understand once for all that it might be as well to throw a stone into his own garden. "Why, Gubblum," said Paul, smothering a laugh, "what was I doing at Hendon?" "Doing! Well, a chap 'at was on the road along of me said that Master Paul had started innkeeper." "Innkeeper!" There was a prolonged burst of laughter, amid which one amused patriarch on a stick shouted: "Feel if tha's abed, Gubblum, ma man!" "And if I is abed, it's better nor being in bed-lam, isn't it?" shouted the peddler. Then Gubblum scratched his head again, and said more quietly: "It caps all. If it wasn't you, it must ha' been the old gentleman hissel'." "Are we so much alike? Come, let's see your pack." "His name was Paul, anyways." Hugh Ritson had elbowed his way through the group, and was now at Gubblum's elbow listening intently. When the others had laughed, he alone preserved an equal countenance. "Paul--what?" he asked. "Nay, don't ax me--I know nowt no mair--I must be an auld maizelin, I must, for sure!" Hugh Ritson turned on his heel and walked off. CHAPTER II. The Vale of Newlands runs north and south. On its east banks rise the Cat Bell fells and the Eel Crags; on the west rise Hindscarth and Robinson, backed by Whiteless Pike and Grasmoor. A river flows down the bed of the valley, springing in the south among the heights of Dale Head, and emptying into Bassenthwaite on the north. A village known as Little Town stands about midway in the vale, and a road runs along each bank. The tents were pitched for the sports near the bed of the valley, on the east side of the Newlands Beck. On the west side, above the road, there was a thick copse of hazel, oak, and birch. From a clearing in this wood a thin column of pale blue smoke was rising through the still air. A hut in the shape of a cone stood a few yards from the road. It was thatched from the ground upward with heather and bracken, leaving only a low aperture as door. Near the hut a small fire of hazel sticks crackled under the pot that swung from a forked triangle of oak limbs. Fagots were stacked at one end of the clearing; a pile of loose bark lay near. It was a charcoal pit, and behind a line of hurdles that were propped with poles and intertwined with dead grass and gorse, an old man was building a charcoal fire.