he drew his arm inside of mine, and
led me up and down the room, "tell me all about it. How have you come
here? What are you doing?"

I have not the faintest recollection of what I said. I know that I
endeavored to take up my story from the day I had last seen him, but
it must have proved a very strange and bungling narrative, from the
questions which he was forced occasionally to put, in order to follow me
out.

"Well," said he, at last, "I will own to you that, after your abrupt
departure, I was sorely puzzled what to make of you, and I might have
remained longer in the same state of doubt, when a chance visit that I
made to Dublin led me to Dycer's, and there, by a mere accident, I heard
of you,--heard who you were, and where your father lived. I went at once
and called upon him, my object being to learn if he had any tidings
of you, and where you then were. I found him no better informed than
myself. He showed me a few lines you had written on the morning you
had left home, stating that you would probably be absent some days, and
might be even weeks, but that since that date nothing had been heard
of you. He seemed vexed and displeased, but not uneasy or apprehensive
about your absence, and the same tone I observed in your college tutor,
Dr. Tobin. He said, 'Potts will come back, sir, one of these days, and
not a whit wiser than he went. His self-esteem is to his capacity in the
reduplicate ratio of the inverse proportion of his ability, and he will
be always a fool.' I wrote to various friends of ours travelling about
the world, but none had met with you; and at last, when about to
come abroad myself, I called again on your father, and found him just
re-married."

"Re-married!"

"Yes! he was lonely, he said, and wanted companionship, and so on;
and all I could obtain from him was a note for a hundred pounds, and
a promise that, if you came back within the year, you should share the
business of his shop with him."

"Never! never!" said I. "Potts maybe the fool they deem him, but there
are instincts and promptings in his secret heart that they know nothing
of. I will never go back. Go on."

"I now come to my own story. I left Ireland a day or two after and came
to England, where business detained me some weeks. My uncle had died and
left me his heir,--not, indeed, so rich as I had expected, but very well
off for a man who had passed his life on very moderate means. There were
a few legacies to be paid, and o