"Will you come down with me, sir, and take a glass of wine?" said Carlo Carlini to the pedlar, well knowing what his master's injunction to take care of his guest implied; "or perhaps you have not dined, sir, and would like something more solid." There was a certain dignity and grace about the man, nothing abated by his foreign accent and look, which had a good deal of effect upon the pedlar, whose general notions of valets and valetry were not very sublime. "Really," thought Joshua Brown, "this is quite a grand sort of a man. One would take him for a prince in disguise, if one didn't know better. He seems no way proud, however, but just like his master." Here his contemplations came to an end, and he replied with a low bow-- "Thank you, sir; I have not dined. As to wine, it's very little of it I get, for there's less of it in our country than in yours, I take it, and not very good either." "There is plenty of very good wine in England," said Carlini, shaking his head solemnly backwards and forwards; "only very dear, Mr. Brown. But my master, who is a rich man and a liberal one, does not grudge me my glass of wine, knowing that I have been accustomed to it all my life as well as himself; for we both come from countries where there is nothing else but wine to be drunk except water." "Is not your master an Englishman, then?" asked Mr. Brown. "No; a Spaniard, to be sure," replied Carlini with a start: "what made you think he was an Englishman?" "Why, his language, his name, his manner, his look," said Joshua Brown, "all made me feel sure he was an Englishman." "Oh, as to his language," said Carlini, "he speaks Italian, Spanish, and French, just as well as he does English; and then as to his name, that's his father's name, and he was an Englishman. His manners and appearance may be English, too; but, nevertheless, he has lived with Spaniards all his life, having been brought up as the nephew and heir of Don Balthazar de Xamorça. But come--let us go down, Mr. Brown. You shall have some dinner, and then we will have a quiet glass of wine together, as you call it in England." Joshua Brown followed his new friend down to a small room on the sunk story, meditating very profoundly as he went. There was something that puzzled him greatly. He could not make the two broken ends of Colonel Middleton's story fit at all, and at last he convinced himself that the servant must have made a mistake. "He cannot have been long in Colonel Middleton's service," he thought; "I will find out how long he has been with him." In pursuance of this resolution, Mr. Joshua Brown, after having comforted the inner man with some very soft and savoury viands, and as soon as a glass of not bad wine was placed in his hand, looked across to Signor Carlini with a very shrewd expression of countenance, winking his eye over the rich juice of the grape, and saying-- "A very good master, yours, Mr. Carlini, I should think. One does not meet with such every day."