Lucy heard a church bell strike: she started from a fit of abstraction, and, turning to move on, confronted an old man who was crossing the bridge. The face of this old man was pale and wrinkled; his hair was long and quite white. His nose streamed down his face in a thin, curling outline; his mouth when his lips were compressed might be expressed by a simple stroke of a pencil. His eyes were deep-seated and extraordinarily luminous and swift in their motions, and his eyebrows, which were as white as his hair, were so thick and overhanging that they might have passed for a couple of white mice sleeping on his brow. His apparel had that dim and faded look which in fiction is associated with miserliness. His high and dingy white cravat and the tall build of his coat at the back of his head, so sloped his shoulders that they looked to make a line with his arms. He wore a faded red waistcoat which sank very low, and under it dangled a bunch of seals. His knee-breeches left painfully visible the pipe-stem shanks clothed in grey hose and terminating in large shoes, burdened with steel buckles. He removed his little round hat and bowed low to Lucy. "Good morning, Mr Greyquill," said the young lady, bestowing upon him one of those sweet and gracious smiles with which she favoured nearly all, thus rendering herself as much beloved for her cordial charm of manner as she was admired by the women and adored by the men for her singular beauty of face and graces of person. He bade her good-morning with profound respect. Her dog barked in his face, and she silenced it by lifting it under her arm. "I hope your cold is better, Mr Greyquill," said she, making to proceed in her walk. "Much better--indeed, quite gone, I am greatly obliged to you, ma'am," he answered. "I find nursing of little account. Gruel and foot-baths and a tallow candle for the nose do not help me so much as fresh air. Fresh air seems to dry the cold up." She agreed with him with a smile, and with a pleasant salutation of the head, walked on. The old man looked after her, and whispered to himself in admiration of her kindness and person. A wooden-legged sailor just then came up some steps from the river side on to that end of the bridge which the money-lender was approaching, and when Greyquill was close to, the tar, assuming a posture of abject despondency, pulled off his hat, and extending it begged for alms. "I have bled for my country, your honour," said the man. "But you don't say you were paid to do so," answered Greyquill. "Ay, but I wasn't paid to lose my leg," called out the man. Greyquill, who saw little to fear in the pursuit of a man with a wooden leg, turned his head upon his shoulder and cried back: "There are too many of us." "That ain't my fault!" bawled the man at the receding figure. "Yes, it is," cried Greyquill. "For people like you who can't get on ought to get out."