“Come,” said Clarence, “your memory has atoned for your horse’s victory, and I quite forgive your conquest in return for your compliment; but suffer me to ask how long you have commenced cavalier. The Arab’s tent is, if I err not, more a badge of your profession than the Arab’s steed.” King Cole (for the stranger was no less a person) looked at his companion in surprise. “So you know me, then, sir! Well, it is a hard thing for a man to turn honest, when people have so much readier a recollection of his sins than his reform.” “Reform!” quoth Clarence, “am I then to understand that your Majesty has abdicated your dominions under the greenwood tree?” “You are,” said Cole, eying his acquaintance inquisitively; “you are. ‘I fear no more the heat of the sun, Nor the furious winter’s rages; I my worldly task have done, Home am gone, and ta’en my wages.’” “I congratulate you,” said Clarence: “but only in part; for I have often envied your past state, and do not know enough of your present to say whether I should equally envy that.” “Why,” answered Cole, “after all, we commit a great error in imagining that it is the living wood or the dead wall which makes happiness. ‘My mind to me a kingdom is;’ and it is that which you must envy, if you honour anything belonging to me with that feeling.” “The precept is both good and old,” answered Clarence; “yet I think it was not a very favourite maxim of yours some years ago. I remember a time when you thought no happiness could exist out of ‘dingle and bosky dell.’ If not very intrusive on your secrets, may I know how long you have changed your sentiments and manner of life? The reason of the change I dare not presume to ask.” “Certainly,” said the quondam gypsy, musingly, “certainly I have seen your face before, and even the tone of your voice strikes me as not wholly unfamiliar: yet I cannot for the life of me guess whom I have the honour of addressing. However, sir, I have no hesitation in answering your questions. It was just five years ago, last summer, when I left the Tents of Kedar. I now reside about a mile hence. It is but a hundred yards off the high road, and if you would not object to step aside and suffer a rasher, or aught else, to be ‘the shoeing-horn to draw on a cup of ale,’ as our plain forefathers were wont wittily to say, why, I shall be very happy to show you my habitation. You will have a double welcome, from the circumstance of my having been absent from home for the last three days.” Clarence, mindful of his journey, was about to decline the invitation, when a few heavy drops falling began to fulfil the cloudy promise of the morning. “Trust,” said Cole, “one who has been for years a watcher of the signs and menaces of the weather: we shall have a violent shower immediately. You have now no choice but to accompany me home.” “Well,” said Clarence, yielding with a good grace, “I am glad of so good an excuse for intruding on your hospitality.