CHAPTER XLIV.
AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE.
Leaving the church, I strolled through the fair, looking at the horses, listening to the chaffering of the buyers and sellers, and occasionally putting in a word of my own, which was not always received with much deference; suddenly, however, on a whisper arising that I was the young cove who had brought the wonderful horse to the fair which Jack Dale had bought for the foreigneering man, I found myself an object of the greatest attention; those who had before replied with stuff! and nonsense! to what I said, now listened with the greatest eagerness to any nonsense which I chose to utter, and I did not fail to utter a great deal.

Presently, however, becoming disgusted with the beings about me, I forced my way, not very civilly, through my crowd of admirers; and passing through an alley and a back street, at last reached an outskirt of the fair, where no person appeared to know me.

Here I stood, looking vacantly on what was going on, musing on the strange infatuation of my species, who judge of a person's words, not from their intrinsic merit, but from the opinion--generally an erroneous one--which they have formed of the person.

From this reverie I was roused by certain words which sounded near me, uttered in a strange tone, and in a strange cadence--the words were, "Them that finds, wins; and them that can't finds, loses." Turning my eyes in the direction from which the words proceeded, I saw six or seven people, apparently all countrymen, gathered round a person standing behind a tall white table of very small compass.

"What!" said I, "the thimble-engro of.