rred here to what George had told him of his first meeting
with Waife, and his visit to Mrs. Crane); the impostor, it seemed, from
what Mr. Hartopp let fall, not being a little queer in the head, as
George had been led to surmise, but a very bad character. "In fact,"
added the elder Morley, "a character so bad that Mr. Hartopp was too
glad to give up to her lawful protectors the child, whom the man appears
to have abducted; and I suspect, from what Hartopp said, though he does
not like to own that he was taken in to so gross a degree, that he
had been actually introducing to his fellow-townsfolk and conferring
familiarly with a regular jail-bird,--perhaps a burglar. How lucky for
that poor, soft-headed, excellent Jos Hartopp, whom it is positively as
inhuman to take in as it would be to defraud a born natural, that
the lady you saw arrived in time to expose the snares laid for his
benevolent credulity. But for that, Jos might have taken the fellow into
his own house (just like him!), and been robbed by this time, perhaps
murdered,--Heaven knows!"

Incredulous and indignant, and longing to be empowered to vindicate his
friend's fair name, George seized his hat, and strode quick along the
path towards the basketmaker's cottage. As he gained the water-side,
he perceived Waife himself, seated on a mossy bank, under a gnarled
fantastic thorntree, watching a deer as it came to drink, and whistling
a soft mellow tune,--the tune of an old English border-song. The deer
lifted his antlers from the water, and turned his large bright eyes
towards the opposite bank, whence the note came, listening and wistful.
As George's step crushed the wild thyme, which the thorn-tree shadowed,
"Hush!" said Waife, "and mark how the rudest musical sound can affect
the brute creation." He resumed the whistle,--a clearer, louder,
wilder tune,--that of a lively hunting-song. The deer turned quickly
round,--uneasy, restless, tossed its antlers, and bounded through the
fern. Waife again changed the key of his primitive music,--a melancholy
belliny note, like the belling itself of a melancholy hart, but more
modulated into sweetness. The deer arrested its flight, and, lured by
the mimic sound, returned towards the water-side, slowly and statelily.

"I don't think the story of Orpheus charming the brutes was a fable; do
you, sir?" said Waife. "The rabbits about here know me already; and, if
I had but a fiddle, I would undertake to make friends with that