“But, t’otherest Governor,” urged Mr. Riderhood again, “no luck never come yet of a dry acquaintance. Let’s wet it, in a mouth-fill of rum and milk, t’otherest Governor.”

Bradley assenting, went with him into an early public-house, haunted by unsavoury smells of musty hay and stale straw, where returning carts, farmers’ men, gaunt dogs, fowls of a beery breed, and certain human nightbirds fluttering home to roost, were solacing themselves after their several manners; and where not one of the nightbirds hovering about the sloppy bar failed to discern at a glance in the passion-wasted nightbird with respectable feathers, the worst nightbird of all.