“Ask him, Stukely,” began the doctor, “if he has ever been in Somerset?”

I did so, and, in truth, the word roused from their long slumber, or we believed they did, recollections that argued well for the physician’s theory.  The idiot raised his brow, and smiled.

The doctor referred to his map, and said, whispering as before, “Mention the river Parret.”

I could not doubt that the name had been familiar to the unhappy man.  He strove to speak, and could not, but he nodded his head affirmatively and quickly, and the expression of his features corroborated the strong testimony.

“Now—­Belton?” added the doctor.

I repeated the word, and then the agony of supplication which I had witnessed once before, was re-enacted, and the shrill and incoherent cries burst from his afflicted breast.

“I am satisfied!” exclaimed the doctor, shutting his book.  “He shall leave my house for Belton this very afternoon.”

And so he did, In an hour, arrangements were in progress for his departure, and I was his guardian and companion.  Robin, as soon as Dr. Mayhew’s intention was known, refused to have any thing more to say, either inside the house or out of it, to the devil incarnate, as he was pleased to call the miserable man.  If his place depended upon his taking charge of him, he was ready to resign it.  There was not another man whom the physician seemed disposed to trust, and in his difficulty he glanced at me.  I understood his meaning.  He proceeded to express his surprise and pleasure at finding an attachment so strong towards me on the part of the idiot.  “It was remarkable,” he said—­“very!  And what a pity it was that he hadn’t cultivated the same regard for somebody else.  A short journey then, to Somerset, would have been the easiest thing in the world.  Nothing but to pop into the coach, to go to an inn on arriving in Belton, and to make enquiries, which, no doubt, would be satisfactorily answered in less than no time.  Yes, really, it was a hundred pities!”

The doctor looked at me again, and then I had already determined to meet the request he was not bold to ask.  I believed, equally with the physician, from the conduct and expressions of young Harrington, that the riddle of his present condition waited for explanation in the village, whose name seemed like a load upon his heart, and constituted the whole of his discourse since he had arrived amongst us.  It was there he yearned to be.  It was necessary only to mention the word to throw him into an agitation, which it took hours entirely to dissipate.  Yes, for a reason well known to him and hidden from us all, his object, his only object as it appeared, was to be removed, and to be conducted thither.  I had but one reason for rejecting the otherwise well sustained hypothesis of my friend.  During my whole intercourse with Emma, I had never heard her speak of Somerset or Belton, and in her narrative no allusion