"Oh, trust you? Certainly, Ned," replied the other. "But will it not hurt you?" Edward expressed his readiness; and the letters were written, full of that well-satisfied confidence which in this world is so often destined to disappointment. Fate is no better than a fine silk stocking, in which one stitch or another is sure to run down ere we have taken a dozen steps in the ball-room of the world: well if it be not rent from top to toe! There are no key-stones in the architecture of our designs; and, if a pebble slips, woe be to the whole edifice! But we are getting a little ahead of the story, or, at least, foreshadowing conclusions which should be reserved in solemn secrecy for the moment of their occurrence. The letters being written, one of the noble lord's grooms was called up, furnished with money and directions, and departed to bear the missives to their several destinations as rapidly and as carefully as he could. "There goes another," said Montagu. "That is the fifth courier I have sent off this week. Upon my word, Ned, if it had not been for your coming with two lackeys and two blacksmiths I should soon have been without any train at all. But you seem not to love your two blacksmiths, my boy. What has set your face against them? Have they lamed your horse, or found you out in a love-affair with the landlord's daughter, cheated you of two _livres Tournois_, or eaten the only fish upon a _jour maigre_?" "None of all those great offences, my lord," replied Edward. "They are good smiths; I have not been fortunate with mine host's daughters; their charges are compassionate to youths without experience; and no trout that I know of has slipped off my own hook. But one of them I am certain I saw in the court of the chateau at Nantes; and I like not the countenance of either." "Pshaw!" said Lord Montagu. "Do you give way to the superstition of physiognomy? Why, cut me across the nose with the back-handed blow of a spadroon, and you make a marvellous ill-favored fellow out of a gay gentleman who has not been thought unpersonable. Nonsense, nonsense, Edward! The best nuts have the roughest shells. The diamond itself is but like a pebble-stone till it is cut and polished. And where in the fiend's name should either of these two poor devils get ground down or burnished?" "Well, my lord, I say not a word against them," answered Edward. "They told a true tale, it seems, as to their journey. To me they were wonderfully kind when I was hurt. Neither do I mind mere ugliness: that is God's doing; and it may be as a warning to others, or it may not: I cannot tell. But there is a sort of look--an expression--which men beget in themselves by their habitual acts or thoughts, which is a great truth-teller, I think. Now, these men look cunning. Each of them squints, too, more or less. One cannot see whom or what they are looking at."