d to a philosopher! But the world is around us as a
cloak, if not a coat; in his ignorance he supposed it specially due to a
lord seeking acquaintance with him, that he should expose his condition:
doing the which appeared to subject him to parade his intellectual
treasures and capacity for shaping sentences; and the effect upon Lord
Fleetwood was an incentive to the display. Nevertheless he had a fretful
desire to escape from the discomposing society of a lord; he fixed his
knapsack and began to saunter.

The young lord was at his elbow. 'I can't part with you. Will you allow
me?'

Woodseer was puzzled and had to say: 'If you wish it.'

'I do wish it: an hour's walk with you. One does not meet a man like
you every day. I have to join a circle of mine in Baden, but there's no
hurry; I could be disengaged for a week. And I have things to ask you,
owing to my indiscretion--but you have excused it.'

Woodseer turned for a farewell gaze at the great Watzmann, and saluted
him.

'Splendid,' said Lord Fleetwood; 'but don't clap names on the
mountains.--I saw written in your book: "A text for Dada." You write:
"A despotism would procure a perfect solitude, but kill the ghost." That
was my thought at the place where we were at the lake. I had it. Tell
me--though I could not have written it, and "ghost" is just the
word, the exact word--tell me, are you of Welsh blood? "Dad" is good
Welsh--pronounce it hard.'

Woodseer answered: 'My mother was a Glamorganshire woman. My father, I
know, walked up from Wales, mending boots on his road for a livelihood.
He is not a bad scholar, he knows Greek enough to like it. He is a
Dissenting preacher. When I strike a truism, I 've a habit of scoring it
to give him a peg or tuning-fork for one of his discourses. He's a man
of talent; he taught himself, and he taught me more than I learnt at
school. He is a thinker in his way. He loves Nature too. I rather
envy him in some respects. He and I are hunters of Wisdom on different
tracks; and he, as he says, "waits for me." He's patient!'

Ah, and I wanted to ask you,' Lord Fleetwood observed, bursting with
it, 'I was puzzled by a name you write here and there near the end, and
permit me to ask, it: Carinthia! It cannot be the country? You write
after, the name: "A beautiful Gorgon--a haggard Venus." It seized me.
I have had the face before my eyes ever since. You must mean a woman. I
can't be deceived in allusions to a woman: they have heart