Elsley came forward to the counter carelessly, nevertheless, after a moment.  “What with my beard, and the lapse of time,” thought he, “he cannot know me.”  So he spoke,—­

“I understand you have been visiting my children, sir.  I hope you did not find them seriously indisposed?”

“Mr. Vavasour?” says Tom, with a low bow.

“I am Mr. Vavasour!” But Elsley was a bad actor, and hesitated and coloured so much as he spoke, that if Tom had known nothing, he might have guessed something.

“Nothing serious, I assure you, sir:  unless you are come to announce any fresh symptom.”

“Oh, no—­not at all—­that is—­I was passing on my way to the quay, and thought it as well to have your own assurance; Mrs. Vavasour is so over-anxious.”

“You seem to partake of her infirmity, sir,” says Tom, with a smile and a bow.  “However, it is one which does you both honour.”

An awkward pause.

“I hope I am not taking a liberty, sir; but I think I am bound to—­”

“What in heaven is he going to say?” thought Elsley to himself, feeling very much inclined to run away.

“Thank you for all the pleasure and instruction which your writings have given me in lonely hours, and lonely places too.  Your first volume of poems has been read by one man, at least, beside wild watchfires in the Rocky Mountains.”

Tom did not say that he pitched the said volume into the river in disgust; and that it was, probably, long since used up as house material by the caddis-baits of those parts,—­for doubtless there are caddises there as elsewhere.

Poor Elsley rose at the bait, and smiled and bowed in silence.

“I have been so long absent from England, and in utterly wild countries, too, that I need hardly be ashamed to ask if you have written anything since ‘The Soul’s Agonies’?  No doubt if you have, I might have found it at Melbourne, on my way home:  but my visit there was a very hurried one.  However, the loss is mine, and the fault too, as I ought to call it.”

“Pray make no excuses,” says Elsley, delighted.  “I have written, of course.  Who can help writing, sir, while Nature is so glorious, and man so wretched?  One cannot but take refuge from the pettiness of the real in the contemplation of the ideal.  Yes, I have written.  I will send you my last book down.  I don’t know whether you will find me improved.”

“How can I doubt that I shall?”

“Saddened, perhaps; perhaps more severe in my taste; but we will not talk of that.  I owe you a debt, sir, for having furnished me with one of the most striking ‘motifs’ I ever had.  I mean that miraculous escape of yours.  It is seldom enough, in this dull every-day world, one stumbles on such an incident ready made to one’s hands, and needing only to be described as one sees it.”

And the weak, vain man chatted on, and ended by telling Tom all about his poem of “The Wreck,” in a tone which seemed to imply that he had done Tom a serious favour, perhaps raised him to immortality, by putting him in a book.