"Nonsense!" cried Mrs Lower angrily; "he was a friend of mine;" and then the doubting dame carefully examined the room, looking in the most impossible of corners for the missing visitor, and only stopping as she was about to peer up the chimney by seeing a half-concealed grin upon the face of Charles. "I'll ask Boots if he's seen him, mem," said Charles, to get out of his difficulty. But that gentleman had neither seen Septimus Hardon nor the articles of clothing after which he was named; so that it seemed evident that the visitor had taken his unbrushed boots and departed. "So very strange!" muttered Mrs Lower to herself. "The seediest pair of boots we've ever had in the place," said Charles in confidence to the chambermaid; and then, after due cogitation, he came to the conclusion that if many of the visitors to the County Arms were like the unknown of the past night, his situation would not be worth the energy he displayed for the comfort of all who sought there rest and refreshment. Volume One, Chapter XVII. "NOTHING LIKE LEATHER." The very morning upon which waiter Charles of the County Arms, Somesham, spoke so disparagingly of Septimus Hardon's boots, the maker, or rather re-maker, of the said boots sat, as soon as it was broad daylight--not an extremely early hour in his home--industriously plying his craft, till, after divers muttered anathemas, a voice growled: "Confound it, Ike, I wish that old lapstone was at the bottom of the Thames. Who's to sleep?" "Get up, then," said the lapstone-smiter slowly and heavily. "Get up!" growled the voice, "get up!" "What, in the middle of the night! Ain't six yet, is it?" "Just struck," said the lapstone-man, following the example of the clock, and hammering vigorously at a scrap of leather about to be used in the repair of an old boot before him; while from sundry smothered growls coming from the room behind the shop where the shoemaker was at work, it was evident that the idler had buried a portion, if not the whole of his face, beneath the blankets, and again offered sacrifice to the sleepy god.