It was with all my old dejection upon me, therefore, that I returned to the tap-room, and, refusing the officious aid of the One-Eyed Man, put on my coat, readjusted my knapsack and crossed to the door. On the threshold I paused, and looked back. "If," said I, glancing round the ring of faces, "if there is any man here who is at all willing to fight for a guinea, ten shillings, or even five, I should be very glad of the chance to earn it." But, seeing how each, wilfully avoiding my eye, held his peace, I sighed, and turning my back upon them, set off along the darkening road. CHAPTER VII OF THE FURTHER PUZZLING BEHAVIOR OF TOM CRAGG, THE PUGILIST Evening had fallen, and I walked along in no very happy frame of mind, the more so, as the rising wind and flying wrack of clouds above (through which a watery moon had peeped at fitful intervals) seemed to presage a wild night. It needed but this to make my misery the more complete, for, as far as I could tell, if I slept at all (and I was already very weary), it must, of necessity, be beneath some hedge or tree. As I approached the brow of the hill, I suddenly remembered that I must once more pass the gibbet, and began to strain my eyes for it. Presently I spied it, sure enough, its grim, gaunt outline looming through the murk, and instinctively I quickened my stride so as to pass it as soon as might be. I was almost abreast of it when a figure rose from beneath it and slouched into the road to meet me. I stopped there and then, and grasping my heavy staff waited its approach. "Be that you, sir?" said a voice, and I recognized the voice of Tom Cragg. "What are you doing—and there of all places?" "Oh—I ain't afeared of 'im," answered Cragg, jerking his thumb towards the gibbet, "I ain't afeard o' none as ever drawed breath—dead or livin'—except it be 'is 'Ighness the Prince Regent." "And what do you want with me?" "I 'opes as theer's no offence, my lord," said he, knuckling his forehead, and speaking in a tone that was a strange mixture of would-be comradeship and cringing servility. "Cragg is my name, an' craggy's my natur', but I know when I'm beat. I knowed ye as soon as I laid my 'peepers' on ye, an' if I said as it were a foul, why, when a man's in 'is cups, d'ye see, 'e's apt to shoot rayther wide o' the gospel, d'ye see, an' there was no offence, my lord, strike me blind! I know you, an' you know me—Tom Cragg by name an' craggy by—" "But I don't know you," said I, "and, for that matter, neither do you know me." "W'y, you ain't got no whiskers, my lord—leastways, not with you now, but—" "And what the devil has that got to do with it?" said I angrily.