CHAPTER IV.
PERCY'S FIRST ADVENTURE AS A FREE AGENT.
It was a fine, picturesque outline of road on which the young outcast found himself journeying, whither he neither knew nor cared.

His heart was full of enterprise and the unfledged valour of inexperience.

He had proceeded several miles, and the dusk of the evening was setting in, when he observed a stage-coach crawling heavily up a hill, a little ahead of him, and a tall, well-shaped man, walking alongside of it, and gesticulating somewhat violently.

Godolphin remarked him with some curiosity; and the man, turning abruptly round, perceived, and in his turn noticed very inquisitively, the person and aspect of the young traveller.
"And how now ?" said he, presently, and in an agreeable, though familiar and unceremonious tone of voice; "whither are you bound this time of day ?" "It is no business of yours, friend," said the boy with the proud petulance of his age; "mind what belongs to yourself." "You are sharp on me, young sir," returned the other; "but it is our business to be loquacious.

Know, sir,"-- and the stranger frowned--"that we have ordered many a taller fellow than yourself to execution for a much smaller insolence than you seem capable of." A laugh from the coach caused Godolphin to lift up his eyes, and he saw the door of the vehicle half-open, as if for coolness, and an arch female face looking down on him.
"You are merry on me, I see," said Percy; "come out, and I'll be even with you, pretty one." The lady laughed yet more loudly at the premature gallantry of the traveller; but the man, without heeding her, and laying his hand on Percy's shoulder, said-- "Pray, sir, do you live at B---- ?" naming the town they were now approaching.
"Not I," said Godolphin, freeing himself from the intrusion.
"You will, perhaps, sleep there ?" "Perhaps I shall." "You are too young to travel alone." "And you are too old to make such impertinent remarks," retorted Godolphin, reddening with anger.
"Faith, I like this spirit, my Hotspur," said the stranger, coolly.