becomes so freshened by months of playful exercise and varied adventure.” “Yes, the adventure is varied enough,” said Kenelm, somewhat ruefully; for he felt, in shifting his posture, a sharp twinge of his bruised muscles. “But don’t you find those mischief-makers, the women, always mix themselves up with adventure?” “Bless them! of course,” said the minstrel, with a ringing laugh. “In life, as on the stage, the petticoat interest is always the strongest.” “I don’t agree with you there,” said Kenelm, dryly. “And you seem to me to utter a claptrap beneath the rank of your understanding. However, this warm weather indisposes one to disputation; and I own that a petticoat, provided it be red, is not without the interest of colour in a picture.” “Well, young gentleman,” said the minstrel, rising, “the day is wearing on, and I must wish you good-by; probably, if you were to ramble about the country as I do, you would see too many pretty girls not to teach you the strength of petticoat interest,--not in pictures alone; and should I meet you again I may find you writing love-verses yourself.” “After a conjecture so unwarrantable, I part company with you less reluctantly than I otherwise might do. But I hope we shall meet again.” “Your wish flatters me much; but, if we do, pray respect the confidence I have placed in you, and regard my wandering minstrelsy and my dog’s tray as sacred secrets. Should we not so meet, it is but a prudent reserve on my part if I do not give you my right name and address.” “There you show the cautious common-sense which belongs rarely to lovers of verse and petticoat interest. What have you done with your guitar?” “I do not pace the roads with that instrument: it is forwarded to me from town to town under a borrowed name, together with other raiment that this, should I have cause to drop my character of wandering minstrel.” The two men here exchanged a cordial shake of the hand. And as the minstrel went his way along the river-side, his voice in chanting seemed to lend to the wavelets a livelier murmur, to the reeds a less plaintive sigh. CHAPTER XVIII. IN his room, solitary and brooding, sat the defeated hero of a hundred fights. It was now twilight; but the shutters had been partially closed all day, in order to exclude the sun, which had never before been unwelcome to Tom Bowles, and they still remained so, making the twilight doubly twilight, till the harvest moon, rising early, shot its ray through the crevice, and forced a silvery track amid the shadows of the floor.