fairy legends instilling perhaps
golden truths,--seeing Waife thus, the scholar mingled with gratitude a
strange tenderness of respect. He knew nought of the vagrant's past, his
reason might admit that in a position of life so at variance with
the gifts natural and acquired of the singular basketmaker, there was
something mysterious and suspicious. But he blushed to think that he had
ever ascribed to a flawed or wandering intellect the eccentricities of
glorious Humour,--abetted an attempt to separate an old age so innocent
and genial from a childhood so fostered and so fostering. And sure I am
that if the whole world had risen up to point the finger of scorn at the
one-eyed cripple, George Morley--the well-born gentleman, the refined
scholar, the spotless Churchman--would have given him his arm to lean
upon, and walked by his side unashamed.

CHAPTER IV.

To judge human character rightly, a man may sometimes have very
small experience, provided he has a very large heart.

Numa Pimpilius did not more conceal from notice the lessons he received
from Egeria than did George Morley those which he received from the
basketmaker. Natural, indeed, must be his wish for secrecy; pretty story
it would be for Humberston, its future rector learning how to preach a
sermon from an old basketmaker! But he had a nobler and more imperious
motive for discretion: his honour was engaged to it. Waife exacted a
promise that he would regard the intercourse between them as strictly
private and confidential.

"It is for my sake I ask this," said Waife, frankly, "though I might say
it was for yours;" the Oxonian promised, and was bound. Fortunately Lady
Montfort quitted the great house the very day after George had first
encountered the basketmaker, and writing word that she should not return
to it for some weeks, George was at liberty to avail himself of her
lord's general invitation to make use of Montfort Court as his lodgings
when in the neighbourhood; which the proprieties of the world would not
have allowed him to do while Lady Montfort was there without either host
or female guests. Accordingly, he took up his abode in a corner of
the vast palace, and was easily enabled, when he pleased, to traverse
unobserved the solitudes of the park, gain the waterside, or stroll
thence through the thick copse leading to Waife's cottage, which
bordered the park pales, solitary, sequestered, beyond sight of the
neighbouring village. The g