"Pardon me," said he, "but I was saluting the bread and cheese."

"Indeed!" said I.

"Indeed!" he rejoined, "it is the first edible I have been on speaking terms with, so to speak, for rather more than three days, sir."

"You are probably hungry?" said I.

"It would be foolish to deny it, sir."

"Then, if you care to eat with me in the ditch here, you are heartily welcome," said I.

"With all the pleasure in life!" said he, vaulting very nimbly through the hedge; "you shall not ask me twice or the very deuce is in it! Believe me, I--" Here he stopped, very suddenly, and stood looking at me.

"Ah!" said he gently, and with a rising inflection, letting the ejaculation escape in a long-drawn breath.

"Well?" I inquired. Now as I looked up at him, the whole aspect of the man, from the toes of his broken boots to the crown of the battered hat, seemed to undergo a change, as though a sudden, fierce anger had leapt into life, and been controlled, but by a strong effort.

"On my life and soul, now!" said he, falling back a step, and eyeing me with a vaguely unpleasant smile, "this is a most unexpected--a most unlooked for pleasure; it is I vow it is."

"You flatter me," said I.

"No, sir, no; to meet you again--some day--somewhere--alone--quite alone, sir, is a pleasure I have frequently dwelt upon, but never hoped to realize. As it is, sir, having, in my present condition, no chance of procuring better weapons than my fists, allow me to suggest that they are, none the less, entirely at your service; do me the infinite kindness to stand up."

"Sir," I answered, cutting a slice from the loaf, "you are the third person within the last forty-eight hours who has mistaken me for another; it really gets quite wearisome."

"Mistaken you," he broke in, and his smile grew suddenly bitter, "do you think it possible that I could ever mistake you?"

"I am sure of it!" said I. "Furthermore, pray do not disparage your fists, sir. A bout at fisticuffs never did a man any harm that I ever heard; a man's fists are good, honest weapons supplied by a beneficent Providence--far better than your unnatural swords and murderous hair-triggers; at least, so I think, being, I trust, something of a philosopher. Still, in this instance, never having seen your face, or heard your voice until yesterday, I shall continue to sit here, and eat my bread and cheese, and if you are wise you will hasten to follow my so excellent example while there is any left, for, I warn you, I am mightily sharp set."

"Come, come," said he, advancing upon me threateningly, "enough of this foolery!"

"By all means," said I, "sit down, like a sensible fellow, and tell me for whom you mistake me."

"Sir, with all the pleasure in life!" said he, clenching his fists, and I saw his nostrils dilate suddenly. "I take you for the greatest rogue, the most gentlemanly rascal but one, in all England!"

"Yes," said I, "and my name?"

"Sir Maurice Vibart!"

"Sir Maurice Vibart?" I sprang to my feet, staring at him in amazement. "Sir Maurice Vibart is my cousin," said I.

And so we stood, for a long minute, immobile and silent, eyeing each other above the bread and cheese.

CHAPTER XIV

FURTHER CONCERNING THE GENTLEMAN IN THE BATTERED HAT

"Sir," said my companion at last, lifting the battered hat, "I tender you my apology, and I shall be delighted to eat with you in the ditch, if you are in the same mind about it?"

"Then you believe me?"

"Indubitably, sir," he answered with a faint smile; "had you indeed been Sir Maurice, either he or I, and most probably I, would be lying flat in the road, by this."

So, without more ado, we sat down in the ditch together, side by side, and began to eat. And now I noticed that when he thought my eye was upon him, my companion ate with a due deliberation and nicety, and when he thought it was off, with a voracity that was painful to witness. And after we had eaten a while in silence, he turned to me with a sigh.

"This is very excellent cheese!" said he.

"The man from whom I bought it," said I, "called it a noble cheese, I remember."

"I never tasted one of a finer flavor!" said my companion.

"Hunger is a fine sauce," said I, "and you are probably hungry?"

"Hungry!" he repeated, bolting a mouthful and knocking his hat over his eyes with a slap on its dusty crown. "Egad, Mr. Vibart! so would you be--so would any man be who has lived on anything he could beg, borrow, or steal, with an occasional meal of turnips--in the digging of which I am become astonishingly expert--and unripe blackberries, which latter I have proved to be a very trying diet in many ways--hungry, oh, damme!"

And after a while, when there nothing remained of loaf or cheese save a few scattered crumbs, my companion leaned back, and gave another sigh.

"Sir," said he, with an airy wave of the hand, "in me you behold a highly promising young gentleman ruined by a most implacable enemy--himself, sir. In the first place you must know my name is Beverley--"

"Beverley?" I repeated.

"Beverley," he nodded, "Peregrine Beverley, very much at your service --late of Beverley Place, Surrey, now of Nowhere-in-Particular."

"Beverley," said I again, "I have heard that name before."

"It is highly probable, Mr. Vibart; a fool of that name--fortunate or unfortunate as you choose to classify him--lost houses, land, and money in a single night's play. I am that fool, sir, though you have doubtless heard particulars ere now?"

"Not a word!" said I. Mr. Beverley glanced at me with a faint mingling of pity and surprise. "My life," I explained, "has been altogether a studious one, with the not altogether unnatural result that I also am bound for Nowhere-in-Particular with just eight shillings and sixpence in my pocket."

"And mine, as I tell you," said he, "has been an altogether riotous one. Thus each of us, though by widely separate roads--you by the narrow and difficult path of Virtue, and I by the broad and easy road of Folly--have managed to find our way into this Howling Destitution, which we will call Nowhere-in-Particular. Then how does your path of Virtue better my road of Evil?"

"The point to be considered," said I, "is not so much what we now are, but rather, what we have done, and may ultimately be, and do."

"Well?" said he, turning to look at me.

"For my own achievements, hitherto," I continued, "I have won the High Jump, and Throwing the Hammer, also translated the works of Quintilian, with the Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter, and the Life, Lives, and Memoirs of the Seigneur de Brantome, which last, as you are probably aware, has never before been done into the English."

"Ha!" exclaimed Mr. Beverley, sitting up suddenly, with his ill-used hat very much over one eye, "there we have it! Whoever heard of Old Quin--What's-his-name, or cared, except, perhaps, a few bald-headed bookworms and withered litterateurs? While you were dreaming of life, and reading the lives of other fellows, I was living it. In my career, episodically brief though it was, I have met and talked with all the wits, and celebrated men, have drunk good wine, and worshipped beautiful women, Mr. Vibart."

"And what has it all taught you?" said I.

"That there are an infernal number of rogues and rascals in the world, for one thing--and that is worth knowing."

"Yes," said I.