THREE:The party then dismounting, secured their horses to the hedge; and, concealing their faces by masks of parchment, smeared over with paint, proceeded to the end of the lane: but a sudden exclamation from the galleyman, who was a little in advance, arrested the steps of all.Calverley entered the Mitre, and, after calling for some wine, was shown into a little private room by the host. A few minutes after, the door opened, and a man entered and took his seat at the end of the table at which Calverley was sitting. The individual who thus invaded the privacy of the steward was a man not much above the middle height. His face had once been comely, but a close intimacy with the bottle had given to his countenance a bloated and somewhat revolting expression. The latter peculiarity, however, was only to be detected by the few who read the heart in the "human face divine;" and even these might be deceived into a prepossession favourable to the man; for his large, full, blue eyes, beamed with much apparent benevolence, and his nose, though clothed in a fiery mantle and tipped with two large carbuncles, was not a nose that Lavater himself could with conscience have objected to. Large, black, whiskers, and thick, bushy, hair, with a beard of the same hue, had given him the characteristic soubriquet of Black Jack. On the whole his appearance and deportment were those of a respectable burgher of the period. This man was not a stranger to Calverley, and Black Jack was, by some chance, still better acquainted with the person and character of the steward. He had heard every particular relative to the child's death, and consequently divined the motive of the steward's visit to the Mitre, and, as he now and then cast a keen glance at Calverley, he might be likened to the author of evil contemplating a man about to engage in some heinous offence, the commission of which would connect them in still closer affinity.
