with men, a child with women. His Rebecca could describe him; I laugh
now at some of her sayings of him; I see her mouth, so tenderly comical
over her big "simpleton," she called him, and loved him so.'

The gentleman appeared on the waste land above the house. His very loose
black suit and a peculiar roll of his gait likened him to a mourning
boatswain who was jolly. In Lord Levellier's workshop his remarks were
to the point. Chillon's powders for guns and blasting interested him,
and he proposed to ride over from Barlings to witness a test of them.

'You are staying at Barlings?' Chillon said.

'Yes; now Carinthia is at Esslemont,' he replied, astoundingly the
simpleton.

His conversation was practical and shrewd on the walk with Chillon
and Carinthia down to Esslemont evidently he was a man well armed
to encounter the world; social usages might be taught him. Chillon
gained a round view of the worthy simple fellow, unlikely to turn out
impracticable, for he talked such good sense upon matters of business.

Carinthia saw her brother tickled and interested. A feather moved her.
Full of tears though she was, her, heart lay open to the heavens and
their kind, small, wholesome gifts. Her happiness in the walk with her
brother and her friend--the pair of them united by her companionship,
both of them showing they counted her their comrade--was the nearest to
the radiant day before she landed on an island, and imagined happiness
grew here, and found it to be gilt thorns, loud mockery. A shaving
North-easter tore the scream from hedges and the roar from copses under a
faceless breadth of sky, and she said, as they turned into Esslemont Park