eigner and a Jewess--crossed the Polish
frontier with his mules and tools, and drove his little covered cart
through Austria. And here he lit upon, and helped in some predicament
of the road, a spirited young Englishman undergoing the miseries of
the grand tour, the son and heir of Philip Yordas. Duncan was large and
crooked of thought--as every true Yordas must be--and finding a mind in
advance of his own by several years of such sallyings, and not yet even
swerving toward the turning goal of corpulence, the young man perceived
that he had hit upon a prophet.

For Bert scarcely ever talked at all of his generous ideas. A
prophet's proper mantle is the long cloak of Harpocrates, and his best
vaticinations are inspired more than uttered. So it came about that
Duncan Yordas, difficult as he was to lead, largely shared the devious
courses of Christopher Bert the workman, and these few months of
friendship made a lasting mark upon the younger man.

Soon after this a heavy blow befell the ingenious wanderer. Among his
many arts and trades, he had some knowledge of engineering, or at
any rate much boldness of it; which led him to conceive a brave idea
concerning some tributary of the Po. The idea was sound and fine, and
might have led to many blessings; but Nature, enjoying her bad work
best, recoiled upon her improver. He left an oozy channel drying (like a
glanderous sponge) in August; and virulent fever came into his tent.
All of his eight children died except his youngest son Maunder; his own
strong frame was shaken sadly; and his loving wife lost all her strength
and buxom beauty. He gathered the remnants of his race, and stricken but
still unconquered, took his way to a long-forgotten land. "The residue
of us must go home," he said, after all his wanderings.

In London, of course, he was utterly forgotten, although he had spent
much substance there, in the days of sanguine charity. Durham was his
native county, where he might have been a leading man, if more like
other men. "Cosmopolitan" as he was, and strong in his own opinions
still, the force of years, and sorrow, and long striving, told upon him.
He had felt a longing to mend the kettles of the house that once was
his; but when he came to the brink of Tees his stout heart failed, and
he could not cross.

Instead of that he turned away, to look for his old friend Yordas; not
to be patronized by him--for patronage he would have none--but from
hankering after a co