"Ha! by Thor and Odin, what's all this?" cried a voice behind him.
"I say what the devil's all this?"

Turning sharp about, Barnabas beheld a shortish, broad-shouldered
individual in a befrogged surtout and cords, something the worse for
wear, who stood with his booted legs wide apart and stared at him
from a handsome bronzed face, with a pair of round blue eyes; he
held a broad-brimmed hat in his hand--the other, Barnabas noticed,
was gone from the elbow.

"Egad!" said he, staring at Barnabas with his blue eyes. "What's in
the wind? I say, what the devil, sir--eh, sir?"

Forthwith Barnabas beamed upon him, and swept him another bow almost
as low as that he had bestowed upon the gate-post.

"Sir," said he, hat gracefully flourished in the air, "your very
humble obedient servant to command."

"A humble obedient fiddlestick, sir!" retorted the new comer.
"Pooh, sir!--I say dammit!--are ye mad, sir, to go bowing and
scraping to a gate-post, as though it were an Admiral of the Fleet
or Nelson himself--are ye mad or only drunk, sir? I say, what d' ye
mean?"

Here Barnabas put on his hat and opened the book.

"Plainly, sir," he answered, "being overcome with a sudden desire to
bow to something or other, I bowed to that gate-post in want of a