Nicholas continued, “What are you doing in this place? You had much better come over and dine with us. My father lives little more than five miles from the town, and will give you a hearty welcome. Do come, we can give you a bed. Well, certainly, I never thought of meeting you to-day. How lucky it was I rode over to take a look at the fish-market! I have got the nicest brill, too.” Warenne replied that he really should have been happy to accept his invitation, but that his horses were tired with their day’s work, and that he was obliged to leave Fisherton at a very early hour on the following morning. “Oh! I can arrange all these matters,” said Nicholas. “You shall have the landlord’s own nag, and a very clever one it is, I can tell you—few better. And if you must be off so early to-morrow, you can return here to-night; though if you would stay all night with us we should like it better, and I would ride over with you in the morning. I shall most probably come here, for to-morrow is the day when our magistrates hold their weekly sessions; and if I have nothing else to do, I usually attend to hear the news. That’s a good fellow; you will come, I see. I’ll call for you in ten minutes, as soon as I have seen that our cart takes the brill.” Warenne, having obtained a loan of the landlord’s horse, was ready to join Nicholas on his return from the fish-market. They quitted the town by the coast road, which for rather more than a mile proceeded in a south-easterly direction. It then bent more to the southward, when they quitted it, and proceeded along a narrow lane, with high hedges on each side, keeping the same course as the portion of the road over which they had already travelled. There was not here much opportunity for observation; and Warenne, willingly diverting his thoughts from the disagreeable lucubrations to which his landlord’s discourse had given rise, entered unreservedly into conversation with his old schoolfellow. He answered Nicholas’s questions concerning his different campaigns, and in return sought to extract from him the history of his past and present life. “You went,” said he, “to Oxford, if I recollect rightly, after you left Eton?”