He had a grave voice, like a judge's, and a quick, pert eye, like a jackdaw's. Outwardly he was as unlike Margaret as the haft of a pike is unlike a lily, but I already saw her spirit in him. "Sir," said I, "when I am fortified by a good supper, I will venture to indicate my preferences on the subject." He took out his snuff-box, tapped it carefully, opened it, and held it out to me. "You have begun well, sir. I hear you are a great scholar, Latin and all that, quite pat. Damme, sir, those ancients understood things. They knew how to honour the gods, for they made soldiers of 'em and set 'em fighting in the clouds. There's divinity for you! You've got twenty-eight minutes." I laughed and left him. The room in which my introduction to the Colonel had taken place was immediately over the archway. Its window opened on to a balcony which, supported on thick oak balks, stood over the causeway of the street; its door was in a passage leading from one wing of the house to the other, and in the passage were three leaded lattice-windows of greenish glass, plentifully sprinkled with blobs and nodes, giving on the long inn-yard. The room was thus admirably situated for people in our precarious position, having a look-out back and front, and a way of escape right and left. The cherry-cheeked lass who had thrown me the kiss was tripping past the door as I opened it. She told me that she had been attending on ''er ladyship,' and willingly led me to a bedroom and brought me thither the things I needed for my sluicing, among them a passable razor and a huckaback fit to fetch the hide off a horse. "Give me now the kiss you threw me," said I, as she was turning to leave. "Nay, sir," she said. "You're not in trouble now, and dunna need it." "Lassie," said I, "that's a right womanly reply, and here's something to buy a ribbon with that shall be worthy of you." And I gave her one of the dead Major's guineas. "Thank yer, sir," she said. "And besides there's no need for you to be kissing the likes of me." "You're a sweetly pretty lassie," said I. "Y' dunna want to be gawpin' around after pennies when there's guineas to be picked up," she replied, with a toss of her head. "Struth, I wish at times I wasna quite so pretty. There's some men, bless you, I know one myself, such fools that they think a pretty wench doesna want kissin'. But, sartin sure, there's never been the like of 'er ladyship in Newcastle in my time. I'll 'ave a ribbon on Sunday as near the colour and shine of 'er ladyship's hair as money can buy, and Sail'll wish 'er'd never been born. I'll Sim 'er." With this terrible threat she flounced out of the room, and I laughed and wondered who and what 'Sim' was. A decent fellow and a good tradesman, I hoped, and wished him pluck and luck.