A small and well-measured breakfast-party, with the tea and the bacon and eggs provided, to expectation and experience, should not be disturbed by the sudden irruption of a rough, unshaven, crumple-shirted, and worst of all, unfed young fellow, who cannot remember when his last meal happened. Therefore I only sent word of my arrival, and went for a swim in Stoneman's lake, as my custom was throughout the year, while Sally was preparing me some bread and milk. But while I was getting through this, and thinking of putting myself into church-going gear, my sister Grace ran in, and embraced me, as warmly as if I were on the Stock Exchange.

"Oh, George, I think you are so noble," she declared, as if she had found me at last too large for her understanding, "to stay away so many weeks"—I had not been away for a week and a half, but let her have a girl's arithmetic—"simply for the sake of other people's affairs, without even appointing anybody to look after your own, all that long while. I thought that I was almost as unselfish as anybody ought to be. But I am not sure that I could quite have done all that."

"You don't understand things, my dear girl," I replied, with that superior tone which used to have a fine effect of closure upon the large feminine parlance. "I knew that hay was going up, and that Mr. Joplin would have to put five shillings on to every pound he offered me in October."

"Hay indeed!" she exclaimed with scorn. "George, it is sweet hay—sweet hay—sour hay! And you have not made it, while the sun shone."

"Speak no more in parables. Speak plain English. What in common-sense are you driving at? There is no hay in the county to beat ours. And I defy any rain to have got into the ricks."

"But suppose the ricks are all clean gone. Oh, George, how stupid you are at metaphors! But if they are gone, without letting you know—oh, I never could believe that, of foreigners even! And after all the great things you have felt for such great people!"

"Out with it!" I said, while my spoon went dribbling. "You mean to tell me, I suppose, if plain English can ever be got from a girl, that SÛr Imar, and his people, have left the neighbourhood."

"His people indeed! Well, if you can take it in that lofty spirit, you may as well know everything. I was quite afraid of telling you. But men are all alike, at least old Sally says so—though what she can know about it, the poor old soul——"

"When did it happen?" I asked quite calmly, for I wanted no pity about it; least of all from a girl who had never entered into any proper view of the question, because I never chose to run and gush to her.

"That is more than we can tell. They must have packed up very quickly, unless they left all their dogs and diamonds behind them. But we only heard of it yesterday, through Slemmick, who had it from Farmer Ticknor. That seems a little rude, considering that you were to have taken me down so soon, to fall at the feet of the Lesghian Bandit. But of course we must not judge them by our own ideas. Perhaps, as we had never called upon them——"

"They would not have troubled their heads about that. They look at things from a higher level. But perhaps they might have sent a boy to tell me, if they had found any time to spare. My dear child, in a quarter of an hour I shall be ready; and then we will go to church together."

Let any man tell me what else he would have done, and I shall be much obliged to him. Not that it could help me very much, for such a thing can scarcely happen twice to any fellow; but that I should like to compare his view of it with what went on in my own mind. Nothing is easier than to talk, when you see the thing a long way off, or (which is even better) only read about it, or give a bold verdict without a glance; which is the wisest course of all.

All that I can say about my part, is that reason did not count for a halfpenny in the business. Pride (which is often a matter of temper, or self-esteem set up to crow, but when it arises in a modest nature is the proper power to keep it sweet)—pride said to me: "I am well aware that you never stuck up for being humble. You hate any fellow that goes in for that, because you believe him a hypocrite. And so he is, ninety-nine times per cent; the one per cent being a true Christian, a quantity altogether negligible. You are not up to that mark. But you are a self-respecting Englishman. Show it, my fine fellow, by whistling at people, who have not known you better than to snub you."

I listened to this, and it all seemed true, as beyond all doubt it ought to be. And I went through everything so well that Grace (who was watching me with tender interest, to learn perhaps how the Stockbroker would take it if she vanished out of his investments) did her best to be pleased for my dear sake; and yet for joint-stock sake afforded me as cold a kiss, when she said good-night, as any man insisting on the abstract woman can hope to receive from the concrete.

This alone was enough to show me that I was on the wrong tack altogether. Women are delightful in their talk, if nobody contradicts them, about their finer nature, and purer standard, and higher mission to ennoble us. All this we acknowledge, and should feel it more if they said less concerning it. But the worst of it is, that if any man regards them as they demand to be regarded, he may stand with his back to the wall while they go by.

Now a man, however dull-witted he may be, has sense enough to know that in any nice point touching his behaviour to the better half of life, a member of that half can show him what to do far better than he can discover it. Nothing could be clearer than that Grace despised the haughtiness and the hardness which she herself would have shown in her own case. "How her eyes would have flashed!" thought I—and then came a vision of other eyes, gentle, true, deep-hearted eyes, sad with some dark mystery perhaps, compelled to keep their tears unseen; but wavering, jiltish, deceitful—never. And then I began to recall her kindly, and found it very comforting.

For when the sweet face came before me, with the soft radiance of those eyes, and the play of those lips that trembled lest they should open themselves unduly, and the movement of a heart that wondered whether it wanted itself to be understood, and a multitude of other little waverings which a man is too dull to interpret,—when all this came home to me with unknown power (because I wanted it and nothing else)—

"Away with this stupid pride!" said Love, clinging to my breast, and whispering; "the Power that made mankind made me, and ordered me never to be far off in the worst of your tribulations. But I must have faith, as even He requires in all His dealings with you. I have offered you as fair a chance as ever was given to a clumsy mortal,—the loveliest creature, a child of my own, as much too good for you as I am. Because the Wicked One has raised a mist, in his loathing of human happiness, are you fool enough to be untrue to me, and shut your blear eyes, and never open them, until nothing is left worth looking at? Go your own way. I have plenty of finer fellows to stand by me."

Though he may not have said it so distinctly—and he is not the fellow anyhow that should talk about a mist—it produced the same effect upon me. I felt myself, after a little thinking, very many cuts above Jackson Stoneman and his slippery stuff among the pats of butter. His love was as sound as a roach, and as merry as a grig; and he was welcome to it: a thing like a bleak that flits under a film of the water, and jumps at a midget, and so becomes fit to make pearl of Paris.

When the striking-weight of a clock is too heavy, it slurs the hours with such a tug that you cannot even count the strokes; and to me, with that heavy weight upon my heart, time went by untimely: slowly, heavily, and sluggishly, if ever I began to count the ticks; but out of all proper chronology, at periods when I kept no eye upon it. Moreover, I had a number of little things to see to, which had been neglected in my absence, so that it was Tuesday afternoon when I stood at the door of St. Winifred, and wondered whether she had fallen back into rust and ruin once again. The old wall fringed with ivy looked like a billow with a ruffled crest before the white comb breaks from it, and the slumber of the valley was not shaken by groan or shudder of the water-wheel. No smoke was rising from the buttressed chimneys which had been repaired and pointed, neither was there any sign of life, or sound of the harsh Caucasian gabble in which many idle souls delighted.

In short, the settlement (which had been so long the puzzle of the neighbourhood, and the blessing of the rate-collectors, for SÛr Imar paid always every penny put upon him) was gone, vanished, a vision of the distance; a pleasant resource for the memory, when not too conceptive at dinner-time; a fact that would fade into a legend soon, and find matter-of-fact disproving it.

If I had not been reduced by this time to a meritorious humility—which I meant to keep up, let it suffer as it might—it would have gone hard with our language to forego one of its strongest and briefest words, which the weaker tongues try to pronounce against us, but condemn themselves by the effort. Being of the purest English birth, and therefore (as even our enemies admit) an embodiment of justice, I stood still, and made allowance for all of lesser privilege. They have quite as much right to their own ideas as the largest of us have to ours. And it is our power of perceiving that which has made us beloved throughout the world, or at least by as many as can understand us. Or if they be few, whose fault is that?

While I was full of these quick thoughts, and exceedingly sorrowful over them, lo, two streaks of yellow on the dark-green grass, and the self-possession of Albion was wellnigh rolled over in its own tricks. Kuban and Orla, as mad as March hares, threw all their wild welcome upon me: kisses, and licks, and the hairiest embraces, and the most lunatic yells of delight; if ever there has been true love, here was the prime of it to knock me off my legs.

Any one may laugh at me and all my pride; for the whole of it went to the dogs in a jiffy. I am blest if I could help a gleam of moisture that made it difficult for me to see the loyal love in eyes that never told a lie. "You dears!" I cried, "you faithful dears!" and they would scarcely let me say it before they were smothering me again, and then they rolled on the ground as if they had got no legs, and then they jumped up and looked at one another to be certain of their facts; and then with one accord they made the valley ring with glorious shouts of joy, and the dead leaves tremble on the lonely trees. And behold, they had roused a great figure of a man, who came from a door where I had trembled like a leaf, and put his hand over his eyes, and gazed at me, as if he had never seen a man before. And then a little figure ran almost between his legs, and I halloed to Stepan and Allai.

Stepan showed a warm desire to embrace me, which proved that to him I was guiltless as yet, while Allai put both hands on his head, and bowed almost to my gaiters. Now if I could only make these fellows understand, and then get them to do the like to me, I should learn all about this sudden flitting, for the smallest of the Lesghians had always seemed to be in partnership with the greatest.

But alas! what a conflict of languages we had! I think it is St. James who dwells with great eloquence upon the many miseries we suffer from the tongue; he has not, however, described for us one of its most diabolical conditions, when it cannot hit upon the word it wants, and flies into a fury of perplexity with itself, and indignation at the stupid ear that keeps it so in limbo. Stepan tried English, and that was very bad; then I tried Lesghian, but that was much worse. He could see that I wanted to know why his master had broken up their English home so suddenly, and without so much as a word of farewell; but all that he could do towards telling me was to shake his head, and make a great noise in his throat, and box the boy's ears for laughing at him. Then something not altogether devoid of true insight occurred to him, for he shouted in a mighty voice, "Stepan dam fool!" and gave Allai some order, which sent him to the buildings like an arrow.

Something had occurred to me also, so often are ideas simultaneous, and while the messenger was gone, I took that leaf of which I have spoken, from my pocket-book, and handed it to Stepan. He looked at it with great surprise, and then put it to his lips and on his forehead, and then tore off a fibre and tasted it. "Adul! Adul!" or some word that sounded like that, he repeated frequently, and did his utmost to show me that he felt great curiosity about it. Upon this I pulled out a pencil and drew a rough sketch of myself being shot at, taking poetic licence to show the bullet in the air and the leaf dropping from it. Also I tried to represent a man crouching in a bush and popping at me, and although not a glimpse had been vouchsafed me of the villain on that occasion, I allowed imagination to indue him with the plumed hat of Prince Hafer. This I had no right to do; but surely a little liberty is pardonable with a gentleman who has taken a shot at one in the dark. At any rate Stepan fell in most briskly with the inference of this costumiery, and seemed rather pleased at the confirmation of his own moral estimate and foresight.

Until I began to think, I was surprised that he should be so calm about that black attempt to annihilate me; but remembering what he had been through, I let him take it according to his nature. He liked me, he approved of me, he thought me a good Englishman; and yet it would have been no more than the finish of a bear-hunt to him to have carried me home on the hurdle I jumped, when I went to the rescue of Allai. And I looked at him, with some disappointment.

"Enemy!" he said; it was the word that had long been hanging in his windcrop; and now he was so delighted with it that he said it three times over. "Good Englisk; dam enemy. Stepan see all—all right, dam enemy!"

His wondrous baldric (better smocked with cartridge-loops than a parish-clerk could show of plaiting on his Sunday front, in the days when his wife was proud of him) bulged on his mighty chest with the elation of this grand discovery. And then he said, "Bad man, bad man!" in a manner which appeared to me too abstract and philosophical. "No doubt you consider it very fine fun," I replied with some warmth of feeling, but the knowledge that he was no wiser.

Then up ran Allai, at a speed which made him resemble a hunted grasshopper, and I took from his claws a sealed letter, and looked at them both, in disdain of any hurry. "This will keep," I said very quietly; for though they knew not the meaning of my words, they might be asked afterwards how I received it, and they should have no flurry to report. So I put it in my pocket, like a Briton.

Stepan, and Allai, and one other man not equally well known to me, had evidently been left to finish the packing of some of the heavier goods, and the bales of books which had been printed, and to take them, as well as the beloved dogs, perhaps by some slower route, and rejoin their master by arrangement. I knew that SÛr Imar had long been preparing to move, when his period of banishment expired, but I was sure that he had no intention of departing so suddenly, when I had seen him last. Stepan contrived to let me know that the luggage was going by a smoker in a day or two from London pond, as he called it; and having no further business there, I took leave of him and Allai. The Lesghian giant was dignified and impressive in his long farewell, and gave me his blessing—as I supposed—and his invitation to the Caucasus. Also this comfort—"Enemy gone. No more shoot good Englisk," which was some relief to a heavy mind. But little Allai, and the two dogs—I could scarcely get away from them, so loving and so sad were they. The short November day was darkening, as I left the valley, where I had found so much wild happiness, and so much deep sorrow to humble me.