lamentations of the poor? Ay, Yahoo, and do vicious
men rule, and attain riches; and impious women pomp and
flattery?--hypocrites, pandars, envious, treacherous, proud?" He
stared with desolate sorrow and wrath into my eyes.

Words in disorder flocked to my tongue. I grew hot and eager, yet by
some instinct held my peace. The fluttering of the dying flames, the
starry darkness, silence itself; what were we who sat together?
Transient shadows both, phantom, unfathomable, mysterious as these.

I fancied he might speak again. Once he started, raised his arm, and
cried out as if acting again in dream some frenzy of the past. And
once he wheeled on me extraordinary eyes, as if he half-recognised
some idol of the irrevocable in my face. These were momentary,
however. Gloom returned to his forehead, vacancy to his eyes.

I heard the outer gate flung open, and a light, strange footfall. So
we seated ourselves, all three, for a while round the smouldering
fire. Mr. Gulliver's servant scarcely took his eyes from my face. And,
a little to my confusion, his first astonishment of me had now passed
away, and in its stead had fallen such a gentleness and humour as I
should not have supposed possible in his wild countenance. He busied
himself over his strips of skin, but if he caught my eye upon his own
he would smile out broadly, and nod his great, hairy head at me, till
I fancied myself a child again and he some vast sweetheart of my
nurse.

When we had supped (sitting together in the great room), I climbed the
ladder into the loft and was soon fast asleep. But from dreams
distracted with confusion I awoke at the first shafts of dawn. I stood
beside the narrow window in the wall of the loft and watched the
distant river change to silver, the bright green of the grass appear.

This seemed a place of few and timorous birds, and of fewer trees. But
all across the dews of the grasses lay a tinge of powdered gold, as
if yellow flowers were blooming in abundance there. I saw no horses,
no sign of life; heard no sound but the cadent wail of the ash-grey
birds in their flights. And when I turned my eyes nearer home, and
compared the distant beauty of the forests and their radiant clouds
with the nakedness and desolation here, I gave up looking from the
window with a determination to be gone as soon as possible from a
country so uncongenial.

Moreover, Mr. Gulliver, it appeared, had returned during the night to
his first mistrust of m