Neville Landless had started so early and walked at so good a pace, that when the church-bells began to ring in Cloisterham for morning service, he was eight miles away. As he wanted his breakfast by that time, having set forth¹ on a crust of bread, he stopped at the next roadside tavern² to refresh.

Visitors in want of breakfast — unless they were horses or cattle, for which class of guests there was preparation enough in the way of water-trough and hay — were so unusual at the sign of The Tilted³ Wagon⁴, that it took a long time to get the wagon into the track of tea and toast and bacon. Neville in the interval⁵, sitting in a sanded parlour, wondering in how long a time after he had gone, the sneezy fire of damp fagots would begin to make somebody else warm.

Indeed, The Tilted Wagon, as a cool establishment on the top of a hill, where the ground before the door was puddled with damp hoofs⁶ and trodden straw; where a scolding landlady⁷ slapped a moist baby (with one red sock on and one wanting), in the bar; where the cheese was cast aground upon a shelf, in company with a mouldy tablecloth⁸ and a green-handled knife, in a sort of cast-iron canoe; where the pale-faced bread shed tears of crumb⁹ over its shipwreck¹⁰ in another canoe; where the family linen¹¹, half washed and half dried, led a public life of lying about; where everything to drink was drunk out of mugs, and everything else was suggestive of a rhyme to mugs; The Tilted Wagon, all these things considered, hardly kept its painted promise of providing good entertainment for Man and Beast. However, Man, in the present case, was not critical, but took what entertainment he could get, and went on again after a longer rest than he needed.

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