Thanks to Jenner and vaccination, we (the English) are nowadays as handsome a people as any, perhaps, in Europe, with smooth skins and features as nature made them; but in the times I talk of, vaccination, alas! was unknown; and whatever the traveller we speak of might have been before he had been attacked by the smallpox, the traces which that horrible malady had left upon his face had deprived it of every vestige of beauty--if, indeed, we except his eyes and eyelashes, which had been spared as if just to redeem his countenance from the frightful. They--his eyes and eyelashes--were certainly fine, very fine; but they were like the beauty of Tadmor in the wilderness, for all was ugliness around them. However, his countenance had a good-humoured expression, which made up for much; neither was it of that vulgar ugliness which robes and ermine but serve to render more low and unprepossessing. But still, when first you saw him, you could not but feel that he was excessively plain; and yet there was always something at the heart which made one--as the ravages of the disease struck the eye--think, if not say, "What a pity!" The dress of the two strangers was alike, and it was military; but although an officer of those days did not feel it at all scandalous or wrong to show himself in his regimentals, yet such was not the case in the present instance; and the habiliments of the two horsemen consisted, as far as could be seen, of a blue riding-coat, bound round the waist by a crimson scarf, with a pair of heavy boots, of that form which afterward obtained the name of Pendragon. Swords were at their sides, and--as was usual in those days, even for the most pacific travellers--large fur-covered holsters were at their saddle-bows; so that, although they had no servants with them, and were evidently of that class of society upon which the more liberal-minded prey and have preyed in all ages, there was about them "something dangerous," to attack which would have implied great necessity or a very combative disposition. As the travellers rode on, the gipsy men, without moving from the places they had before occupied, eyed them from under their bent brows, affecting withal hardly to see them; while the urchins ran like young apes by the side of their horses, performing all sorts of antics, and begging hard for halfpence; and at length a girl of about fifteen or sixteen--notwithstanding some forcible injunctions to forbear on the part of the old woman who was tending the caldron--sprang up the bank, beseeching the gentlemen, in the usual singsong of her tribe, to cross her hand with silver, and have their fortunes told; promising them at the same time a golden future, and, like Launcelot, "a pretty trifle of wives."