Ale and liquors extra." With that she turned her back on them, and Peke, pulling Helmsley by the arm, took him into the common room of the inn, where there were several men seated round a long oak table with "gate-legs" which must have been turned by the handicraftsmen of the time of Henry the Seventh.

Here Peke set down his basket of herbs in a corner, and addressed the company generally.
"'Evenin', mates! All well an' 'arty ?" Three or four of the party gave gruff response.

The others sat smoking silently.

One end of the table was unoccupied, and to this Peke drew a couple of rush-bottomed chairs with sturdy oak backs, and bade Helmsley sit down beside him.
"It be powerful warm to-night!" he said, taking off his cap, and showing a disordered head of rough dark hair, sprinkled with grey.

"Powerful warm it be trampin' the road, from sunrise to sunset, when the dust lies thick and 'eavy, an' all the country's dry for a drop o' rain." "Wal, _you_ aint got no cause to grumble at it," said a fat-faced man in very dirty corduroys.