A big, broad-shouldered, slightly stooping man, with white hair, shaven face, and bushy eyebrows, was the George Borrow whom on a fine summer afternoon I met on the lawn at Coombe End. He was dressed in rusty broadcloth. At the moment he was about to take a walk across the common. He did me the honour to ask me to accompany him. The only book of his that I had read at that time was “The Bible in Spain.” It used to be given to me when I was quite a little boy as suitable Sunday reading. It was very unlike the general run of Sunday reading to which I had become accustomed. It was, indeed, a series of lurid adventures, hairbreadth escapes, desperate encounters, fire, thunder, murder, and sudden death—a boy’s book of the most pronounced type. And its title notwithstanding, I felt, even in those young days, that the incidents related must have been evolved by the teeming imagination of a novelist. My first walk with Borrow confirmed me in the certainty of my childish instinct. Crude uncritical people, without a due respect for literary genius, would, on the strength of his conversation during that walk of mine, have characterized him offhand as a flamboyant liar. The true explanation is that he was continually evolving or devising incidents which, once given shape, remained with him as facts to be thenceforth remembered and related as occurrences duly observed. I feel sure that Borrow firmly believed that he had personally experienced all the eburescent transactions described in his “Bible in Spain.” On our way across the common he was accosted by a tramp. Borrow was infuriate. He invited the sturdy beggar to fight—he even began to divest himself of his broadcloth frock-coat; but the beggar made off. He was in search of benefactions, not of blows. Had the beggar been a gipsy, Borrow’s attitude would have been quite friendly. He would have, were it needed, administered to the wants of the swarthy nomad; but an English beggar was in the eyes of Borrow simply an habitual criminal, and as such should be soundly trounced whenever encountered. In a road t’other side the common he took me into a beerhouse, and called for two half-pints of “swipes.” Thus in such places they call their thinnest, sourest, and cheapest ale. Borrow drank his as one enjoying a rare vintage. With difficulty I sipped a tipple, which I found to be simply villainous. In the far corner of the taproom sat a man at a table. He had finished his mug of ale, and was slumbering. “See that fellow?” asked Borrow in an impressive stage whisper. “Yes,” I replied faintly, for the beer was positively making me ill. “That man is a murderer. Finish your swipes. I’ll tell you all about it when we get out.”