Sure enough, there was 'Squire Seneky, as the honest farmers around the Nest call him; though many of them must change their practices, or it will shortly become so absurd to apply the term "honest" to them, that no one will have the hardihood to use it. Newcome came slowly towards the forecastle, on which we were standing; and my uncle determined to get into conversation with him, as a means of further proving the virtue of our disguises, as well as possibly of opening the way to some communications that might facilitate our visit to the Nest. With this view, the pretended pedlar drew a watch from his pocket, and, offering it meekly to the inspection of the quasi lawyer, he said-- "Puy a vatch, shentlemans?" "Hey! what? Oh! a watch," returned Seneca, in that high, condescending, vulgar key, with which the salt of the earth usually affect to treat those they evidently think much beneath them in intellect, station, or some other great essential, at the very moment they are bursting with envy, and denouncing as aristocrats all who are above them. "Hey! a watch, is it? What countryman are you, friend?" "A Charmans--ein Teutscher." "A German--ine Tycher is the place you come from, I s'pose?" "Nein--ein Teutscher isht a Charman." "Oh, yes! I understand. How long have you been in Ameriky?" "Twelf moont's." "Why, that's most long enough to make you citizens. Where do you live?" "Nowhere; I lifs jest asht it happens--soometimes here, ant soometimes dere." "Ay, ay! I understand--no legal domicile, but lead a wandering life. Have you many of these watches for sale?" "Yees--I haf asht many as twenty. Dey are as sheep as dirt, and go like pig clocks." "And what may be your price for this?" "Dat you can haf for only eight tollars. Effery poty wilt say it is golt, dat doesn't know petter." "Oh! it isn't gold then--I swan!"--what this oath meant I never exactly knew, though I suppose it to be a puritan mode of saying "I swear!" the attempts to cheat the devil in this way being very common among their pious descendants, though even "Smith Thompson" himself can do no man any good in such a case of conscience--"I swan! you come plaguy near taking even me in! Will you come down from that price any?" "If you wilt gif me some atfice, perhaps I may. You look like a goot shentlemans, and one dat woultn't sheat a poor Charmans; ant effery poty wants so much to sheat de poor Charmans, dat I will take six, if you will drow in some atfice." "Advice? You have come to the right man for that! Walk a little this way, where we shall be alone. What is the natur' of the matter--action on the case, or a tort?" "Nein, nein! it isht not law dat I wants, put atfice." "Well, but advice leads to law, ninety-nine times in a hundred." "Ya, ya!" answered the pedlar, laughing; "dat may be so; put it isht not what I vants--I vants to know vere a Charman can trafel wit' his goots in de coontry, and not in de pig towns."