urgent need of change, that they
left off opposing his wish to travel. There is no use, however, in
talking about this now.

I never got from him how he managed to reach the shepherd's hut, but I
learned some little from the shepherd, when I stayed with him both on
going towards Erewhon, and on returning.

"He did not seem to have drink in him," said the shepherd, "when he first
came here; but he must have been pretty full of it, or he must have had
some bottles in his saddle-bags; for he was awful when he came back. He
had got them worse than any man I ever saw, only that he was not awkward.
He said there was a bird flying out of a giant's mouth and laughing at
him, and he kept muttering about a blue pool, and hanky-panky of all
sorts, and he said he knew it was all hanky-panky, at least I thought he
said so, but it was no use trying to follow him, for it was all nothing
but horrors. He said I was to stop the people from trying to worship
him. Then he said the sky opened and he could see the angels going about
and singing 'Hallelujah.'"

"How long did he stay with you?" I asked.

"About ten days, but the last three he was himself again, only too weak
to move. He thought he was cured except for weakness."

"Do you know how he had been spending the last two days or so before he
got down to your hut?"

I said two days, because this was the time I supposed he would take to
descend the river.

"I should say drinking all the time. He said he had fallen off his horse
two or three times, till he took to leading him. If he had had any other
horse than old Doctor he would have been a dead man. Bless you, I have
known that horse ever since he was foaled, and I never saw one like him
for sense. He would pick fords better than that gentleman could, I know,
and if the gentleman fell off him he would just stay stock still. He was
badly bruised, poor man, when he got here. I saw him through the gorge
when he left me, and he gave me a sovereign; he said he had only one
other left to take him down to the port, or he would have made it more."

"He was my father," said I, "and he is dead, but before he died he told
me to give you five pounds which I have brought you. I think you are
wrong in saying that he had been drinking."

"That is what they all say; but I take it very kind of him to have
thought of me."

My father's illness for the first three weeks after his return played
with him as a cat plays with a mouse