e you not throwing away the
substance for the shadow? No, do not answer me yet. You imagine that I
am a prosperous nobleman, just declared my uncle's heir, on the
threshold of the best of good fortune, and, from the point of view of a
judicious servant, a jewel of a master to serve and stick to? Well, my
boy, I am nothing of the kind, nothing of the kind."

As I said the words, I came to a full stop and held up the lantern to
his face. He stood before me, brilliantly illuminated on the background
of impenetrable night and falling snow, stricken to stone between his
double burden like an ass between two panniers, and gaping at me like a
blunderbuss. I had never seen a face so predestined to be astonished, or
so susceptible of rendering the emotion of surprise; and it tempted me
as an open piano tempts the musician.

"Nothing of the sort, Rowley," I continued, in a churchyard voice.
"These are appearances, petty appearances. I am in peril, homeless,
hunted. I count scarce any one in England who is not my enemy. From this
hour I drop my name, my title; I become nameless; my name is proscribed.
My liberty, my life, hang by a hair. The destiny which you will accept,
if you go forth with me, is to be tracked by spies, to hide yourself
under a false name, to follow the desperate pretences and perhaps share
the fate of a murderer with a price upon his head."

His face had been hitherto beyond expectation, passing from one depth to
another of tragic astonishment, and really worth paying to see; but at
this it suddenly cleared. "O, I ain't afraid!" he said; and then,
choking into laughter, "why, I see it from the first!"

I could have beaten him. But I had so grossly overshot the mark that I
suppose it took me two good miles of road and half an hour of elocution
to persuade him I had been in earnest. In the course of which I became
so interested in demonstrating my present danger that I forgot all about
my future safety, and not only told him the story of Goguelat, but threw
in the business of the drovers as well, and ended by blurting out that
I was a soldier of Napoleon's and a prisoner of war.

This was far from my views when I began; and it is a common complaint of
me that I have a long tongue. I believe it is a fault beloved by
fortune. Which of you considerate fellows would have done a thing at
once so foolhardy and so wise as to make a confidant of a boy in his
'teens, and positively smelling of the nursery? And when h