“Cause it looks like it, sir, to go to offer a poor chap sixpence.” The postillion laughed hollow from the end of his lungs. “Sixpence for a night’s work! It is a joke, if you don’t mean it for one. Why, do you know, sir, I could go—there, I don’t care where it is!—I could go before any magistrate livin’, and he’d make ye pay. It’s a charge, as custom is, and he’d make ye pay. Or p’rhaps you’re a goin’ on my generosity, and’ll say, he gev back that sixpence! Well! I shouldn’t a’ thought a gentleman’d make that his defence before a magistrate. But there, my man! if it makes ye happy, keep it. But you take my advice, sir. When you hires a chariot, see you’ve got the shiners. And don’t you go never again offerin’ a sixpence to a poor man for a night’s work. They don’t like it. It hurts their feelin’s. Don’t you forget that, sir. Lay that up in your mind.” Now the postillion having thus relieved himself, jeeringly asked permission to smoke a pipe. To which Evan said, “Pray, smoke, if it pleases you.” And the postillion, hardly mollified, added, “The baccy’s paid for,” and smoked. As will sometimes happen, the feelings of the man who had spoken out and behaved doubtfully, grew gentle and Christian, whereas those of the man whose bearing under the trial had been irreproachable were much the reverse. The postillion smoked—he was a lord on his horse; he beheld my gentleman trudging in the dust. Awhile he enjoyed the contrast, dividing his attention between the footfarer and moon. To have had the last word is always a great thing; and to have given my gentleman a lecture, because he shunned a dispute, also counts. And then there was the poor young fellow trudging to his father’s funeral! The postillion chose to remember that now. In reality, he allowed, he had not very much to complain of, and my gentleman’s courteous avoidance of provocation (the apparent fact that he, the postillion, had humbled him and got the better of him, equally, it may be), acted on his fine English spirit. I should not like to leave out the tobacco in this good change that was wrought in him. However, he presently astonished Evan by pulling up his horses, and crying that he was on his way to Hillford to bait, and saw no reason why he should not take a lift that part of the road, at all events. Evan thanked him briefly, but declined, and paced on with his head bent. “It won’t cost you nothing—not a sixpence!” the postillion sang out, pursuing him. “Come, sir! be a man! I ain’t a hintin’ at anything—jump in.” Evan again declined, and looked out for a side path to escape the fellow, whose bounty was worse to him than his abuse, and whose mention of the sixpence was unlucky.