"At first I only went into the bar-parlour to get a drink. It was rather dark in there, for it was very near sunset and the windows were small, and I had slipped off my knapsack and dropped into a big comfortable chair before I noticed a clean-shaven man with a big hooked nose and gleaming eyes seated in the far corner. It was like the beak of a bird, that nose, and I was so fascinated by it that I didn't answer the landlord when he came in and said 'Good evening.' The man opposite said 'Good evening' too, so I suppose that it must have been just a mistaken idea of mine, but I really thought at first that he had something against me, his glance was so confoundedly malevolent. He was a tall young chap in a Norfolk suit with a soft silk collar and scarlet tie, russia-leather shoes and a watch in an alligator case on his left wrist. A gentleman evidently by the look of him and when he said to me, in the refined voice of the ordinary university man, 'Are you walking down country?' I made up my mind that he was O. K. and began to converse. "One thing rather puzzled me, and that was the fact that he and the landlord did not speak to each other. While I was drinking my whisky they both talked to me and I to them, but they did not exchange a word. I thought it was strange that a landlord should ignore a guest like that, especially as the guest didn't look as if he would stand much ignoring. Indeed, there was a sort of glint in his dark eyes as he made the most ordinary remark that struck me as particularly baleful. However, we talked of the floods and my tramp and hunting, etc., and finally I decided to stop the night there. The landlord went off to order supper and my new friend came over and sat down beside me. Somehow or other I found myself talking over old times. On thinking the matter over I have come to the conclusion that it was his use of one or two words like 'tool,' meaning 'to run hard,' that led me to accept him as one of us. 'Topping' was another word. Before I was aware of it, and without his definitely stating the fact, I was treating him as a public-school man. "'Do you know Surrey?' he asked me. 'It's rather jolly.' "'I know Guildford,' I said. 'I was at school there.' "'Were you really?' he replied, and he began to hum '_As I was going to Salisbury_,' which is Winchester and nothing else as you will remember. That settled it, and I asked him whose house he was in. 'Jerry Bud's,' he told me. 'I was in old Martin's,' I said. 'Did you know Belvoir? He was in Bud's.' "'The wine merchant's son?' he said, and I nodded. "He gave me a curious look at this, as though he was suspicious of me. 'Seen him lately?' he asked. 'Not for years,' I said. 'What became of him?' 'Oh, I don't know,' he said as though relieved. 'I thought perhaps _you'd_ kept it up. He went into the army, I believe.'