rewarded with one."

Here Jack drew up another chair and I moved to make more room, so that he
could sit next to Brocton, to whom he was soon detailing in eager whispers
the result of his visit to the town hall. The others took up the broken
links of talk, and this gave me an opportunity of inspecting the company.

There could be no doubt about the man on my left. His vicious, pimply
face manifested him Major Tixall, and Mistress Margaret's shudder was
easily accounted for. He turned his shoulder to me and talked to another
officer, who, so far, was only in his apprenticeship at the same game.
Beyond were two other officers of a wholly different stamp, and the one
who smiled at me with his eyes I took to be Sir Ralph Sneyd, a young
Staffordshire baronet of high repute. Then came Master Dobson, separating
the military sheep from the civilian goats. There was the Friday-faced
clothier and mercer, Master Allwood, strange company here since he was the
elder of a dissenting congregation in the town, and therefore well
separated from his reverence. The worthy mercer's dissent did not extend,
so rumour had it, to the making of hard bargains, and doubtless he was for
once hob-nobbing with the great in respect of his long purse rather than
of his long prayers. Other townsmen, whose names I did not know or cannot
recall, separated deacon from rector.

The last man in the company, sitting opposite to his lordship, was a
stranger, and by far the man best worth looking at in the room. He had
drawn back a little, either out of the heat of the fire or to avoid his
reverence's vinous gossip as much as possible. Except that he was
certainly neither soldier nor parson, and probably not a lawyer, I could
make nothing of him. He had a massive head and a resolute and intelligent
face. He wore no wig and his hair was grey and closely cropped. I judged