sked, "what your occupation in
Mechester is?"

"It is of no consequence," the boy answered shortly. "It is an
occupation that does not count. It does not make for anything in life.
One must do something to earn one's daily bread."

"You find my questioning rather a nuisance, I am afraid," Rochester
remarked, politely.

"I will not deny it," the boy answered. "I will admit that I wish to
be alone. I am hoping that very soon you will be going."

"On the contrary," Rochester replied, smiling, "I am much too
interested in your amiable conversation. You see," he added, knocking
the ashes from his pipe, and leaning carelessly back against the rock,
"I live in a world, every member of which is more or less satisfied. I
will be frank with you, and I will admit that I find satisfaction in
either man or woman a most reprehensible state. I find a certain
relief, therefore, in talking to a person who wants something he
hasn't got, or who wants to be something that he isn't."

"Then you can find all the satisfaction you want in talking to me,"
the boy declared, gloomily. "I am at the opposite pole of life, you
see, to those friends of yours. I want everything I haven't got. I am
content with nothing that I have."

"For instance?" Rochester asked, suggestively.

"I want freedom from the life of a slave," the boy said. "I want
money, the money that gives power. I want the right to shape my own
life in my own way, and to my own ends, instead of being forced to
remain a miserable, ineffective part of a useless scheme of
existence."

"Your desires are perfectly reasonable," Rochester remarked, calmly.
"Imagine, if you please--you seem to have plenty of imaginative
force--that I am a fairy godfather. I may not look the part, but at
least I can live up to it. I will provide the key for your escape. I
will set you down in the world you are thirsting to enter. You shall
take your place with the others, and run your race."

The boy suddenly abandoned his huddled-up position, and rose to his
feet. Against the background of empty air, and in the gathering
darkness, he seemed thinner than ever, and smaller.

"I am going," he said shortly. "It may seem amusing to you to make fun
of me. I will not stay----"

"Don't be a fool!" Rochester interrupted. "Haven't you heard that I am
more than half a madman? I am going to justify my character for
eccentricity. You see my house down there--Beauleys, they call it? At
twelve o'clock to-morro