speaking only to yourself, your words were
earnest, though they were not true; why do
you speak differently to a fellow-creature?"

"Fellow creature! ha! ha! What a way
to talk to a gentleman!" exclaimed the
traveller. " I see how it is, I'm in for a sermon."
He stopped suddenly. "So, out with it at
once—sudden death is my motto. I hate
lingering agony. Where's your text?"

The hermit was silent. They continued
to climb the steep.

"You talk of teaching me to know the
world! " continued the traveller. " Why
you don't know even the rudiments of education
in it. We don't have our hearts given
us to keep them in our pockets, and bring
out on all occasions; they are packed up out
of sight in a bony case, not to be come at
easily. You, for example, look as dry and
harmless as a dead leaf; and I might take
you and talk to you as part and parcel of the
woodland scenery, a log of it, I may say—a
piece of lignum vitæ; or perhaps a male
nymph; if I stopped here as I wished to do, I
might talk my heart out to you, and we might
be very sober upon brookwater: by the by,
do you drink that, and does it give you
goître?"

The hermit paused before an overhanging
rock. A rude porch overgrown with passion-
flowers sheltered the entrance to a cave, and
under this there was a stone bench placed.
The traveller sat down.

"Now, hospitable friend," he said, "can you
refresh a pilgrim with some hermit's fare?
Produce your pumpkins."

"Presently. But this is not my home.
First let us "—

"Oh! by all means; first let us see the
curiosities. This, I suppose, is your museum."

The hermit with a grave look passed into
the cave, and his companion followed. Within
the cave there was a dim light and an earthy
smell; across one part of it there hung a
curtain beside which the hermit stood.
" What you are now about to see" —he said.

The young man interrupted him. "This
really is too bad. I suppose you've got there
thirty miles of Nile or Mississippi, rolled up
in a few yards of paint and canvas. I might
as well have stepped in out of Piccadilly.
Spare the lecture. Draw the curtain. Well,
what's here? A globe? Pooh, man, I
learned the globes at school. Odd, though,
certainly." And the young man approached
the spectacle quite silently. It was a simple
globe, revolving slowly, without visible
support, suspended in the air, and all around it
the air glittered with a strange, inexplicable
mist. The mist spread rapidly throughout
the cave, enveloping the hermit and the
traveller; but through it the revolving globe
appeared to shine with new distinctness.
The traveller had some fear to conceal, for it
appeared to him that on that little orb the
land was land, the rocks were rocks, the seas
were seas, although incomprehensibly minute.
The glitter of the little seas attracted him,
but as he gazed on any spot it grew. His
eye was fixed with terror. Waves grew
under it. He knew no more about the
cavern, or the hermit, or the wondrous mist;
there were but two things present to his
mind, himself and the great panting ocean
underneath a hot bright sun. A boat with
spread sails floated by so close before him,
that he drew back suddenly as if to stand out
of its path. Sailors were in it, one was jesting
with his wife; their child, a blue-eyed flaxen-
headed little man of five years old, was playing
at the stern, and dabbled with his rosy
fingers in the water. Suddenly he lost his
balance, there was a splash, a cry another
cry, the mother's and the father leapt into
the sea to save him. Our traveller strains
forward with a beating heart, they struggle
vainly; he will leap in to the rescue, but an
unknown power binds him, as a nightmare,
and he stands motionless, and can only turn his
eyes away. When next he looks, there is no
ocean, but the little globe revolving in its
mist.

"How it glistens—glares at us. It is too
much: drop the curtain, hermit!"

The hermit draws the curtain, and they are
together in the cave again. "I have been eating
wild grapes in the wood, and made myself a
vision," said the traveller, "or were you
playing tricks with ether vapour? Pooh,
friend! I have breathed chloroform a dozen
times; I am not to be cheated with mere
druggery."

"Shall I explain?" asked the hermit.

"Certainly—confess."

"When I was a young man," said the
hermit, "indolent and careless, I soon thought
that I had seen the world. All its excitements
were run through, and I felt wearied;
I was what the French pronounce blasé, just
as you are now."

"Just as I am. Yes, very good. A strong
comparison."

"And so I said to myself, 'I will abjure the
world. For all purposes of amusement, it is
a failure.'"

"For all purposes of amusement it is a
failure!" echoed the traveller.

"I had read all the novels" (the traveller
groaned), "seen all the exhibitions, knew what
were the stock-themes in the newspapers, and
I thirsted after something new."

"And thirsting vainly," said the traveller,
"you shrivelled up into the dry thing I now
behold."

"Pardon me," said the hermit, "I did not
thirst vainly. I betook myself to antiquities,
there found the novelty I required in studying
black letter. I bought books of magic, and
became "—

"Upon my word, I honour you," the
traveller once more interrupted. " You fell back
upon the forgotten wisdom of our ancestors.
Wore a white waistcoat, did you not? You