Your health, Sir,' said the bagman with the lonely eye, bestowing an

approving nod on Mr Snodgrass.

Mr Snodgrass acknowledged the compliment.

I always like to hear a good argument,'continued the bagman, 'a

sharp one, like this: it's very improving; but this little argument about

women brought to my mind a story I have heard an old uncle of mine

tell, the recollection of which, just now, made me say there were

rummer things than women to be met with, sometimes.'

I should like to hear that same story,' said the red-faced man with the

cigar.

Should you?' was the only reply of the bagman, who continued to

smoke with great vehemence.

'So should I,' said Mr Tupman, speaking for the first time. He was

always anxious to increase his stock of experience.

Should YOU? Well then, I'll tell it. No, I won't. I know you won't

believe it,' said the man with the roguish eye, making that organ look

more roguish than ever. 'If you say it's true, of course I shall,' said Mr

Tupman.

Well, upon that understanding I'll tell you,' replied the traveller. 'Did

you ever hear of the great commercial house of Bilson & Slum? But it

doesn't matter though, whether you did or not, because they retired

from business long since. It's eighty years ago, since the circumstance

happened to a traveller for that house, but he was a particular friend

of my uncle's; and my uncle told the story to me. It's a queer name;

but he used to call it

THE BAGMAN'S STORY

and he used to tell it, something in this way.

'One winter's evening, about five o'clock, just as it began to grow dusk,

a man in a gig might have been seen urging his tired horse along the

road which leads across Marlborough Downs, in the direction of

Bristol. I say he might have been seen, and I have no doubt he would

have been, if anybody but a blind man had happened to pass that

way; but the weather was so bad, and the night so cold and wet, that

nothing was out but the water, and so the traveller jogged along in the

middle of the road, lonesome and dreary enough. If any bagman of

that day could have caught sight of the little neck-or-nothing sort of

gig, with a clay- coloured body and red wheels, and the vixenish, ill

tempered, fast-going bay mare, that looked like a cross between a

The Pickwick Papers