aid Kenelm, with a grave and sweet politeness of tone and
manner, which he could command at times, and which, in its difference
from merely conventional urbanity, was not without fascination,--"I
fear that I have offended you by a question that must have seemed to you
inquisitive, perhaps impertinent; accept my excuse: it is very rarely
that I meet any one who interests me; and you do." As he spoke he
offered his hand, which the wayfarer shook very cordially.

"I should be a churl indeed if your question could have given me
offence. It is rather perhaps I who am guilty of impertinence, if I
take advantage of my seniority in years and tender you a counsel. Do not
despise Nature or regard her as a steam-engine; you will find in her
a very agreeable and conversable friend if you will cultivate her
intimacy. And I don't know a better mode of doing so at your age, and
with your strong limbs, than putting a knapsack on your shoulders and
turning foot-traveller like myself."

"Sir, I thank you for your counsel; and I trust we may meet again
and interchange ideas as to the thing you call Nature,--a thing which
science and art never appear to see with the same eyes. If to an artist
Nature has a soul, why, so has a steam-engine. Art gifts with soul all
matter that it contemplates: science turns all that is already gifted
with soul into matter. Good-day, sir."

Here Kenelm turned back abruptly, and the traveller went his way,
silently and thoughtfully.

CHAPTER XV.

KENELM retraced his steps homeward under the shade of his "old
hereditary trees." One might have thought his path along the
greenswards, and by the side of the babbling rivulet, was pleasanter and
more conducive to peaceful thoughts than the broad, dusty thoroughfare
along which plodded the wanderer he had quitted. But the man addicted to
revery forms his own landscapes and colours his own skies.

"It is," soliloquized Kenelm Chillingly, "a strange yearning I have
long felt,--to get out of myself, to get, as it were, into another man's
skin, and have a little variety of thought and emotion. One's self is
always the same self; and that is why I yawn so often. But if I can't
get into another man's skin, the next best thing is to get as unlike
myself as I possibly can do. Let me see what is myself. Myself is
Kenelm Chillingly, son and heir to a rich gentleman. But a fellow with
a knapsack on his back, sleeping at wayside inns, is not at all like
Kenelm Chilling