ent at a furious pace. Saddlebank's goose was reverted to by both
of us with an exchange of assurances that we should meet a dish the
fellow to it before we slept.

'As for life,' said I, as soon as the sharp pace had fetched my breathing
to a regular measure, 'adventures are what I call life.'

Temple assented. 'They're capital, if you only see the end of them.'

We talked of Ulysses and Penelope. Temple blamed him for leaving Calypso.
I thought Ulysses was right, otherwise we should have had no slaying of
the Suitors but Temple shyly urged that to have a Goddess caring for you
(and she was handsomer than Penelope, who must have been an oldish woman)
was something to make you feel as you do on a hunting morning, when there
are half-a-dozen riding-habits speckling the field--a whole glorious day
your own among them! This view appeared to me very captivating, save for
an obstruction in my mind, which was, that Goddesses were always
conceived by me as statues. They talked and they moved, it was true, but
the touch of them was marble; and they smiled and frowned, but they had
no variety they were never warm.

'If I thought that!' muttered Temple, puffing at the raw fog. He admitted
he had thought just the contrary, and that the cold had suggested to him
the absurdity of leaving a Goddess.

'Look here, Temple,' said I, 'has it never struck you? I won't say I'm
like him. It's true I've always admired Ulysses; he could fight best,
talk best, and plough, and box, and how clever he was! Take him all
round, who wouldn't rather have had him for a father than Achilles? And
there were just as many women in love with him.'

'More,' said Temple.

'Well, then,' I continued, thanking him in my heart, for it must have
cost him something to let Ulysses be set above Achilles, 'Telemachus is
the one I mean. He was in search of his father. He found him at last.
Upon my honour, Temple, when I think of it, I 'm ashamed to have waited
so long. I call that luxury I've lived in senseless. Yes! while I was
uncertain whether my father had enough to eat or not.'

'I say! hush!' Temple breathed, in pain at such allusions. 'Richie, the
squire has finished his bottle by about now; bottle number two. He won't
miss us till the morning, but Miss Beltham will. She'll be at your
bedroom door three or four times in the night, I know. It's getting
darker and darker, we must be in some dreadful part of London.'

The contrast he presented to my sensat