The road was lonely, likewise the heath. There was no one in sight, not even a returning plowman; but the recumbent wayfarer could hear, mellowed by distance, the bells of homing cows. Beasts as they were, he envied them. They at least had a place to sleep in for the night; he was without a home, without even the necessary money to procure shelter. Luckily it was summer-time, dry and warm. Also the tramp affected the philosopher. "This," he remarked, eying a sixpence extracted from the knotted corner of his handkerchief, "is a drink--two drinks if I take beer, which is gouty. But it is not a meal nor a bed. No! one drink, and a morsel of bread-and-cheese. But the bed! Ah!" He stared at the coin with a sigh, as though he hoped it would swell into a shilling. It did not, and he sighed again. "Shall I have good luck in this place?" cried he. "Heads I shall, tails I shan't." The coin spun and fell heads. "Ha!" said the tramp, getting on to his feet, "this must be seen to. I fly to good fortune on willing feet," and he resumed his trudging. A quarter of an hour brought him to the encircling wood. He passed beyond pine and larch and elm into a cozy little village with one street. This was broken in the center by an expanse of green turf surrounded by red-roofed houses, amongst them--as he saw from the swinging sign--a public-house, called, quaintly enough, the Good Samaritan. "Scriptural," said the stranger--"possibly charitable. Let us see." He strode forward into the taproom. In the oiliest of tones he inquired for the landlord. But in this case, it appeared, there was no landlord, for a vixenish little woman, lean as a cricket and as shrill, bounced out with the information that she, Mrs. Timber, was the landlady. Her husband, she snapped out, was dead. To the tramp this hostess appeared less promising than the seductive sign, and he quailed somewhat at the sight of her. However, with a brazen assurance born of habit, he put a bold face on it, peremptorily demanding bread, cheese, and ale. The request for a bed he left in abeyance, for besides the vixenish Mrs. Timber there hovered around a stalwart pot-boy, whose rolled-up sleeves revealed a biceps both admirable and formidable. "Bread, cheese, and ale," repeated the landlady, with a sharp glance at her guest's clerical dress, "for this. And who may you be, sir?" she asked, with a world of sarcasm expended on the "sir." "My name is Cicero Gramp. I am a professor of elocution and eloquence." "Ho! a play-actor?" Mrs. Timber became more disdainful than ever. "Not at all; I am not on the boards. I recite to the best families. The Bishop of Idlechester has complimented me on my----" "Here's the bread-and-cheese," interrupted the landlady, "likewise the beer. Sixpence!"