At the time I thought this very noble of Paragot. In a way it was so, for my master, who had never committed a dishonourable action in his life, was genuine in his scorn of the insinuation that he proposed to live on Joanna's money. He verily believed himself capable of reattaining fame and fortune. It was only the nuisance of having to do so that, at introspective times, disconcerted him. He knew that to break away from a thirteen-year-old habit of idleness would need considerable effort. But he was a man, _nom d'un chien_! To prove it he called for a quart of ale in the bar-parlour of the Black Boar, an old coaching inn, set back from the road. The little eyes of the fleshy rubicond host, loafing comfortably in shirt-sleeves, glistened as he received the Pantagruelian order and brought the great tankard with a modest half pint for me, and a jorum of rum for himself. Paragot was worthy of a host's attention. Paragot pledged him and literally poured the contents of the tankard down his throat. The landlord stared in an ecstasy of admiration. "Well, I'm damned," said he. "I'll take another," said Paragot. The landlord brought another tankard. "How do you manage it?" he asked. Paragot explained that he had learned the art in Germany. You open your throat to the good beer without moving the muscles whereby you swallow, and down it goes. "Well, I'm jiggered," said mine host. "Have you no pretty drinkers hereabouts?" asked my master, sipping the second quart. "They lots of 'em comes here and gets fuddled, if that's what you mean." Paragot waved an impatient hand. "To get fuddled on beer is not pretty drinking. Haven't you any hard-headed topers who are famous in the neighborhood? Men who can carry their liquor like gentlemen and whose souls expand as they get more and more filled with the alcohol of human kindness? If so, I should like to meet them." "There isn't any as could toss off a quart like that." "Have you always lived in Melford?" "Oh no," replied the landlord, as if resenting the suggestion, "I was born and bred in Devizes." "It must be a devil of a place, Devizes," said Paragot. "It be none so bad," assented the landlord. A woman's voice from the bar summoned him away. Paragot pushed his unfinished quart from him and rose. He shook his head sadly. "I am disappointed in that man. He is a mere bucolic idiot. I shall waste my talents intellectual and bibulous on him no longer. Our excursion into the Bohemia of Melford is a failure, my little Asticot, and the beer is confoundedly sour. I am glad I did not vagabondise in rural England." "Why?" I asked. "To avoid an asylum for idiots I should have rushed into the dissenting ministry. I might have expected mine host to be a dullard. In this country the expected always happens, which paralyses the brain. Now let us go home to lunch." He paid the bill, and as we issued from the door of the inn we fell into the arms of Joanna and Major Walters.