"No, no, Tommie," says his companion, "you go too fast. Our friend is so monstrous good that I vow and I protest he must drink a glass of claret." Thereupon he countermanded the justice's order with a certain easy air of authority that was natural to him, which carried more weight than all the assumption of the magistrate. This strange fellow, still chuckling, poured out a glass of wine from one of several bottles that adorned the table, and leaving his seat carried it over to me, despite the fact that he hobbled very badly with the gout. When he stood up he was wonderfully imposing, being more than six feet tall, with an appearance of perfect breeding and majesty, for all his profligate looks and his free, laughing, jovial, devil-may-care manners. As he offered me the glass of claret with a charming grace, I looked down at the cords that so tightly secured my wrists with an air of humorous deprecation. "Here, hold this, and keep your long nose clear of the rim," says he, putting the wine into the hands of the astonished head-constable. He then drew a knife from his pocket, and without more ado cut off my fetters. As he did so an honest indignation seemed to run in him suddenly. "What a dirty way to treat a gentleman!" he said. "But you must excuse these low fellows; they are not to blame. They have no discretion but simply to follow their calling. They only know a hog by his bristles." "As a former _custos rotulorum_ for the county of Wilts, none knows that better than I, sir. But I am vastly obliged to you, vastly obliged." Thereupon I drank the glass he so kindly handed to me. "My dear sir," says he, with another great laugh, "that was not the work of a tyro. There was a neatness and a deftness in the manner of it that must have cost you at least ten thousand liftings of the elbow to acquire. You are as good to drink with as to talk to. I'faith you must do me the honour of sitting at table, for you are a three-bottle man, or I have never seen one in the world." You may be sure that I was nothing loth to accept an invitation that was as unexpected as it was desirable. The bewilderment of the justice, the constable and his men, and the poor gypsies too, was boundless as I briskly followed this extraordinary gentleman when he hobbled back to his chair, and promptly ensconced my disreputable self in one of the high-backed oaken seats of my forefathers, now so courteously placed at my disposal. While he proceeded to refill my glass and his own too, the scandalized magistrate very naturally expostulated in the most vehement manner.