ess with the sunshine of the woods, occasionally conjuring up the
antidote face of the wood-sprite before he was to undergo it. But, as he
was not by nature a dreamer, only dreamed of the luxury of being one,
he soon looked back with loathing on a notion of relief to come from the
state of ruminating animal, and jumped up and shook off another of men's
delusions--that they can, if they have the heart to suffer pain, deaden
it with any semi-poetical devices, similar to those which Rufus Abrane's
'fiddler fellow' practised and was able to carry out because he had no
blood. The spite of a present entire opposition to Woodseer's professed
views made him exult in the thought, that the mouther of sentences was
likely to be at work stultifying them and himself in the halls there
below during the day. An imp of mischief offered consolatory sport
in those halls of the Black Goddess; already he regarded his recent
subservience to the conceited and tripped peripatetic philosopher as
among the ignominies he had cast away on his road to a general contempt;
which is the position of a supreme elevation for particularly sensitive
young men.

Pleasure in the scenery had gone, and the wood-sprite was a flitted
vapour; he longed to be below there, observing Abrane and Potts and the
philosopher confounded, and the legible placidity of Countess Livia.
Nevertheless, he hung aloft, feeding where he could, impatient of the
solitudes, till night, when, according to his guess, the ladies were at
their robing.

Half the fun was over: but the tale of it, narrated in turn by Abrane
and his Chummy Potts on the promenade, was a very good half. The fiddler
had played for the countess and handed her back her empty purse, with a
bow and a pretty speech. Nothing had been seen of him since. He had
lost all his own money besides. 'As of course he would,' said Potts. 'A
fellow calculating the chances catches at a knife in the air.'

'Every franc-piece he had!' cried Abrane. 'And how could the jackass
expect to keep his luck! Flings off his old suit and comes back here
with a rig of German bags--you never saw such a figure!--Shoreditch
Jew's holiday!--why, of course, the luck wouldn't stand that.'

They confessed ruefully to having backed him a certain distance,
notwithstanding. 'He took it so coolly, just as if paying for goods
across a counter.'

'And he had something to bear, Braney, when you fell on him,' said
Potts, and murmured aside: 'He can be s