dupe goes on, “I saw how Bill Whipcord was riding; he eased at the corner, when I wouldn’t have taken two thousand for my bets, and you could see that he let Stonemason up.  I had taken seven to four eight times in hundreds, and that broke me.”  The ragged raffish man never thinks that he was quite ready to plunder other people; he grows inarticulate with rage only when he remembers how he was bitten instead of being the biter.  His watery eyes slant as you near a roadside inn, and he is certain to issue an invitation.  Then you see what really brought him low.  It may be a lovely warm day, when the acrid reek of alcohol is more than usually abhorrent; but he must take something strong that will presently inflame the flabby bulge of his cheeks and set his evil eyes watering more freely than ever.  Gin is his favourite refreshment, because it is cheap, and produces stupefaction more rapidly than any other liquid.  Very probably he will mix gin and ale in one horrid draught—­and in that case you know that he is very far gone indeed on the downward road.  If he can possibly coax the change out of you when the waiter puts it down he will do so, for he cannot resist the gleam of the coins, and he will improvise the most courageous lies with an ease which inspires awe.  He thanks you for nothing; he hovers between cringing familiarity and patronage; and, when you gladly part with him, he probably solaces himself by muttering curses on your meanness or your insolence.  Once more—­how does the faded military person come to be on the roads?  We shall come to that presently.

Observe the temporary lord of the tap-room when you halt on the dusty roads and search for tea or lunch.  He is in black, and a soiled handkerchief is wound round his throat like an eel.  He wears a soft felt hat which has evidently done duty as a night-cap many times, and he tries to bear himself as though the linen beneath his pinned-up coat were of priceless quality.  You know well enough that he has no shirt on, for he would sell one within half an hour if any Samaritan fitted him out.  His boots are carefully tucked away under the bench, and his sharp knees seem likely to start through their greasy casing.  As soon as he sees you he determines to create an impression, and he at once draws you into the conversation.  “Now, sir, you and I are scholars—­I am an old Balliol man myself—­and I was explaining to these good lads the meaning of the phrase which had puzzled them, as it has puzzled many more. Casus belli, sir—­that is what we find in this local rag of a journal; and status quo ante bellum.  Now, sir, these ignorant souls couldn’t tell what was meant, so I have been enlightening them.  I relax my mind in this way, though you would hardly think it the proper place for a Balliol man, while that overfed brute up at the Hall can drive out with a pair of two-hundred-guinea bays, sir.  Fancy a gentleman and a scholar being in this company, sir!  Now Jones, the landlord