Those acquainted with Colonel Crane and Mr. Owen Hood, the lawyer, may or may not be concerned to know that they partook of an early lunch of eggs and bacon and beer at the inn called the Blue Boar, which stands at the turn of a steep road scaling a wooded ridge in the West Country. Those unacquainted with them may be content to know that the Colonel was a sunburnt, neatly-dressed gentleman, who looked taciturn and was; while the lawyer was a more rusty red-haired gentleman with a long Napoleonic face, who looked taciturn and was rather talkative. Crane was fond of good cooking; and the cooking in that secluded inn was better than that of a Soho restaurant and immeasurably better than that of a fashionable restaurant. Hood was fond of the legends and less-known aspects of the English country-side; and that valley had a quality of repose with a