Fairthorn contrived to
insinuate himself much more than formerly into his master's habitual
companionship. The faithful fellow had missed Darrell so sorely in that
long unbroken absence of five years, that on recovering him, Fairthorn
seemed resolved to make up for lost time. Departing from his own habits,
he would, therefore, lie in wait for Guy Darrell--creeping out of a
bramble or bush, like a familiar sprite; and was no longer to be awed
away by a curt syllable or a contracted brow. And Darrell, at first
submitting reluctantly, and out of compassionate kindness to the
flute-player's obtrusive society, became by degrees to welcome and relax
in it. Fairthorn knew the great secrets of his life. To Fairthorn alone
on all earth could he speak with out reserve of one name and of one
sorrow. Speaking to Fairthorn was like talking to himself, or to his
pointers, or to his favourite doe, upon which last he bestowed a new
collar, with an inscription that implied more of the true cause that had
driven him a second time to the shades of Fawley than he would have let
out to Alban Morley or even to Lionel Haughton. Alban was too old for
that confidence--Lionel much too young. But the Musician, like Art
itself, was of no age; and if ever the gloomy master unbent his outward
moodiness and secret spleen in any approach to gaiety, it was in a
sort of saturnine playfulness to this grotesque, grown-up infant. They
cheered each other, and they teased each other. Stalking side by side
over the ridged fallows, Darrell would sometimes pour forth his whole
soul, as a poet does to his muse; and at Fairthorn's abrupt interruption
or rejoinder, turn round on him with fierce objurgation or withering
sarcasm, or what the flute-player abhorred more than all else, a
truculent quotation from Horace, which drove Fairthorn away into some
vanishing covert or hollow, out of which Darrell had to entice him, sure
that, in return, Fairthorn would take a sly occasion to send into his
side a vindictive prickle. But as the two came home in the starlight,
the dogs dead beat and poor Fairthorn too,--ten to one but what the
musician was leaning all his weight on his master's nervous arm, and
Darrell was looking with tender kindness in the face of the SOMEONE left
to lean upon him still.

One evening, as they were sitting together in the library, the two
hermits, each in his corner, and after a long silence, the flute-player
said abruptly

"I have been thinkin