“Inconsequent foolishness is lunacy, I suppose?” said the Hermit.

“I suppose it is very like it,” answered Mr. Traveller.

“Do I converse like a lunatic?”

“One of us two must have a strong presumption against him of being one, whether or no.  Either the clean and decorously clad man, or the dirty and indecorously clad man.  I don’t say which.”

“Why, you self-sufficient bear,” said the Hermit, “not a day passes but I am justified in my purpose by the conversations I hold here; not a day passes but I am shown, by everything I hear and see here, how right and strong I am in holding my purpose.”

Mr. Traveller, lounging easily on his billet of wood, took out a pocket pipe and began to fill it.  “Now, that a man,” he said, appealing to the summer sky as he did so, “that a man—­even behind bars, in a blanket and skewer—­should tell me that he can see, from day to day, any orders or conditions of men, women, or children, who can by any possibility teach him that it is anything but the miserablest drivelling for a human creature to quarrel with his social nature—­not to go so far as to say, to renounce his common human decency, for that is an extreme case; or who can teach him that he can in any wise separate himself from his kind and the habits of his kind, without becoming a deteriorated spectacle calculated to give the Devil (and perhaps the monkeys) pleasure,—­is something wonderful!  I repeat,” said Mr. Traveller, beginning to smoke, “the unreasoning hardihood of it is something wonderful—­even in a man with the dirt upon him an inch or two thick—­behind bars—­in a blanket and skewer!”

The Hermit looked at him irresolutely, and retired to his soot and cinders and lay down, and got up again and came to the bars, and again looked at him irresolutely, and finally said with sharpness:  “I don’t like tobacco.”

“I don’t like dirt,” rejoined Mr. Traveller; “tobacco is an excellent disinfectant.  We shall both be the better for my pipe.  It is my intention to sit here through this summer day, until that blessed summer sun sinks low in the west, and to show you what a poor creature you are, through the lips of every chance wayfarer who may come in at your gate.”

“What do you mean?” inquired the Hermit, with a furious air.

“I mean that yonder is your gate, and there are you, and here am I; I mean that I know it to be a moral impossibility that any person can stray in at that gate from any point of the compass, with any sort of experience, gained at first hand, or derived from another, that can confute me and justify you.”

“You are an arrogant and boastful hero,” said the Hermit.  “You think yourself profoundly wise.”

“Bah!” returned Mr. Traveller, quietly smoking.  “There is little wisdom in knowing that every man must be up and doing, and that all mankind are made dependent on one another.”

“You have companions outside,” said the Hermit.  “I am not to be imposed upon by your assumed confidence in the people who may enter.”