It was a morning as desperately and delugingly rainy as any that showery region can send down. In the phrase of the country, it _siled_ down, or run, as if through a sieve. Straight down streamed the plenteous element, thick, incessant, and looking as if it would hold on the whole day through. It thundered on the roof, beat a sonorous tune on porches and projections of door and window, splashed in torrents on window-sills, and streaming panes, and rushed along the streets in rivers. The hills were hidden, the very fowls driven to roost--and not a soul was to be seen out of doors. Presently there was a sound of hurrying wheels, a spring-cart came up to the side door, with two men in it, in thick great coats, and with sacks over their shoulders; one huge umbrella held over their heads, and they and their horse yet looking three parts drowned. They lost no time in pitching their umbrella to the hostler, who issued from the passage, descending and rushing into the inn. In the next moment the two countrymen, divested of their sacks and great coats, were ushered into this room, the waiter, making a sort of apology, because there was a fire there--it was in the middle of July. The two men, who appeared Peak farmers, with hard hands, which they rubbed at the fire, and tanned and weather-beaten complexions, ordered breakfast--of coffee and broiled ham--which speedily made its appearance, on a table placed directly in front of the before solitary stranger, between the side look-out window and the front one. They looked, and were soon perceived by our stranger to be, father and son. The old man, of apparently upward of sixty, was a middle-sized man, of no Herculean mould, but well knit together, and with a face thin and wrinkled as with a life-long acquaintance with care and struggle. His complexion was more like brown leather than any thing else, and his hair, which was thin and grizzled, was combed backward from his face, and hung in masses about his ears. The son was much taller than the father, a stooping figure, with flaxen hair, a large nose, light blue eyes, and altogether a very gawky look. The old man seemed to eat with little appetite, and to be sunk into himself, as if he was oppressed by some heavy trouble. Yet he every now and then roused himself, cast an anxious look at his son, and said, "Joe, lad, thou eats nothing." "No, fayther," was the constant reply; "I towd you I shouldn't. This reen's enough te tak any body's appetite--and these t'other things," casting a glance at the stranger.