Page:Waverley Novels, vol. 22 (1831).djvu/260



CHAPTER XIII.

Ay, I know you have arsenic, Vitriol, sal-tartre, argaile, alkaly, Cinoper: I know all.--This fellow, Captain, Will come in time to be a great distiller, And give a say (I will not say directly,    But very near) at the philosopher's stone. THE ALCHEMIST.

Tressilian and his attendants pressed their route with all dispatch. He had asked the smith, indeed, when their departure was resolved on, whether he would not rather choose to avoid Berkshire, in which he had played a part so conspicuous? But Wayland returned a confident answer. He had employed the short interval they passed at Lidcote Hall in transforming himself in a wonderful manner. His wild and overgrown thicket of beard was now restrained to two small moustaches on the upper lip, turned up in a military fashion. A tailor from the village of Lidcote (well paid) had exerted his skill, under his customer's directions, so as completely to alter Wayland's outward man, and take off from his appearance almost twenty years of age. Formerly, besmeared with soot and charcoal, overgrown with hair, and bent double with the nature of his labour, disfigured too by his odd and fantastic dress, he seemed a man of fifty years old. But