let us so conclude the transaction." Pickleson, who up to that remark
had had the dejected appearance of a long Roman rushlight that couldn't
anyhow get lighted, brightened up at his top extremity, and made his
acknowledgments in a way which (for him) was parliamentary eloquence. He
likewise did add, that, having ceased to draw as a Roman, Mim had made
proposals for his going in as a conwerted Indian Giant worked upon by The
Dairyman's Daughter. This, Pickleson, having no acquaintance with the
tract named after that young woman, and not being willing to couple gag
with his serious views, had declined to do, thereby leading to words and
the total stoppage of the unfortunate young man's beer. All of which,
during the whole of the interview, was confirmed by the ferocious
growling of Mim down below in the pay-place, which shook the giant like a
leaf.

But what was to the present point in the remarks of the travelling giant,
otherwise Pickleson, was this: "Doctor Marigold,"--I give his words
without a hope of conweying their feebleness,--"who is the strange young
man that hangs about your carts?"--"The strange young _man_?" I gives
him back, thinking that he meant her, and his languid circulation had
dropped a syllable. "Doctor," he returns, with a pathos calculated to
draw a tear from even a manly eye, "I am weak, but not so weak yet as
that I don't know my words. I repeat them, Doctor. The strange young
man." It then appeared that Pickleson, being forced to stretch his legs
(not that they wanted it) only at times when he couldn't be seen for
nothing, to wit in the dead of the night and towards daybreak, had twice
seen hanging about my carts, in that same town of Lancaster where I had
been only two nights, this same unknown young man.

It put me rather out of sorts. What it meant as to particulars I no more
foreboded then than you forebode now, but it put me rather out of sorts.