Pigeon-breeders dropped in and smoked long pipes in the kitchen with Master Simon, and slowly matured bets and matches. And once or twice in the summer months a company of pilgrims would arrive--queer literary men in velveteen coats, who examined all the rooms and furniture as though they meant to make a bid for the inn complete; who talked with outlandish tongues and ordered expensive dinners, and usually paid for them next morning, rather to Master Simon's surprise. It appeared that there had been once, in the time of Master Simon's grandfather, a certain pot-boy at the "Flowing Source" who ran off into the world and became a great poet; and these pilgrimages were made in his honour. Master Simon found this story somehow very creditable to himself, and came in time to take almost as much pride in it as in his pigeons and broiled salmon. Regularly after dinner on these occasions he would exhibit an old pewter pint-pot to the pilgrims, and draw their attention to the following verse, scratched upon it--as he asserted--by the poet's own hand: Who buys beef buys bones, Who buys land buys stones, Who buys eggs buys shels, But who buys ale buys nothing els. And the pilgrims feigned credulity according as they valued Master Simon's opinion of their intelligence. But most welcome of all were the merchant-captains from Ponteglos, among whom custom had made it a point of honour to report themselves at the "Flowing Source" within twenty-four hours after dropping anchor by Ponteglos Quay. When or why or how the custom arose nobody was old enough to remember; but a master mariner would as soon have thought of sailing without log or leadline as of putting in and out of Ponteglos without tasting Master Simon's ale--"calling for orders," as they put it. Master Simon had never climbed a sea-going ship except to shake hands with a friend and wish him good passage and return to shore with the pilot; but the teak walls of his parlour were lined with charts of such very remote parts of the globe, and his shelves with such a quantity of foreign china and marine curiosities, and he spoke so familiarly of Galapagos, Batavia, Cape Verde, the Horn, the Straits of Magellan, and so forth, and would bring his telescope so knowingly to bear on the gilt weathercock over Ponteglos church tower, that until you knew the truth you would have sworn half his life had been spent on the quarter-deck. And while the sea-captains--serious men, attired in blue cloth, wearing rings in their ears--sat and smoked canaster and other queer tobaccos in painted china pipes, and talked of countries whose very names conjured up visions of parrots, and carved idols, and sharks, and brown natives in flashing canoes, Master Simon would put a shrewd question or two and wag his head over the answers as a man who hears just what he expected. And sometimes towards the close of the sitting, if he knew his company very well, he would reward them with