I had a day free between two lectures in the south-west of England, and
I spent it stopping at a town in which there was a large and very
comfortable old posting-house or coaching-inn. I had meant to stay some
few hours there and to take the last train out in the evening, and I
had meant to spend those hours alone and resting; but this was not
permitted me, for just as I had taken up the local paper, which was a
humble, reasonable thing, empty of any passion and violence and very
reposeful to read, a man came up and touched my left elbow sharply: a
gesture not at all to my taste nor, I think, to that of anyone who is
trying to read his paper.
I looked up and saw a man who must have been quite sixty years of age.
He had on a soft, felt slouch hat, a very old and greenish black coat;
he stooped and shuffled; he was clean-shaven, with long grey hair, and
his eyes were astonishingly bright and piercing and set close together.
He said, “I beg your pardon.”