Note 0q — INTRODUCTION

It looks as if he met Jasper by appointment at the Welsh border. But extraordinary rencontres are commonplace in Borrow’s career. He meets the Apple-woman’s Armenian customer and restores his purse, he meets Ardrey as he is leaving London, and later at the inn on the Great North Road, where he also meets the Man in Black, Mr. Platitude, and the Postillion. He meets the Apple-woman’s son after leaving Salisbury, and six days later meets Slingsby, whom he had met as a boy at Tamworth. He meets Mrs. Herne—or, rather, she meets him—in the Shropshire dingle; he meets his Irish friend Murtagh at Horncastle, at the same fair; and in the person of Jack Dale, he meets the pseudo-Quaker’s son, who many years ago had robbed the old Chinese scholar from whom Borrow had just parted.