I heard the outer gate flung open, and a light, strange footfall.  So we seated ourselves, all three, for a while round the smouldering fire.  Mr. Gulliver’s servant scarcely took his eyes from my face.  And, a little to my confusion, his first astonishment of me had now passed away, and in its stead had fallen such a gentleness and humour as I should not have supposed possible in his wild countenance.  He busied himself over his strips of skin, but if he caught my eye upon his own he would smile out broadly, and nod his great, hairy head at me, till I fancied myself a child again and he some vast sweetheart of my nurse.

When we had supped (sitting together in the great room), I climbed the ladder into the loft and was soon fast asleep.  But from dreams distracted with confusion I awoke at the first shafts of dawn.  I stood beside the narrow window in the wall of the loft and watched the distant river change to silver, the bright green of the grass appear.

This seemed a place of few and timorous birds, and of fewer trees.  But all across the dews of the grasses lay a tinge of powdered gold, as if yellow flowers were blooming in abundance there.  I saw no horses, no sign of life; heard no sound but the cadent wail of the ash-grey birds in their flights.  And when I turned my eyes nearer home, and compared the distant beauty of the forests and their radiant clouds with the nakedness and desolation here, I gave up looking from the window with a determination to be gone as soon as possible from a country so uncongenial.

Moreover, Mr. Gulliver, it appeared, had returned during the night to his first mistrust of my company.  He made no sign he saw me, and left his uncouth servant to attend on me.  For him, indeed, I began to feel a kind of affection springing up; he seemed so eager to befriend me.  And whose is the heart quite hardened against a simple admiration?  I rose very gladly when, after having stuffed a wallet with food, he signed to me to follow him.  I turned to Mr. Gulliver and held out my hand.

“I wish, sir, I might induce you to accompany me,” I said.  “Some day we would win our way back to the country we have abandoned.  I have known and loved your name, sir, since first I browsed on pictures—­Being measured for your first coat in Lilliput by the little tailors:—­Straddling the pinnacled city.  Ay, sir, and when the farmers picked you up ’twixt finger and thumb from among their cornstalks....”

I had talked on in hope to see his face relax; but he made no sign he saw or heard me.  I very speedily dropped my hand and went out.  But when my guide and I had advanced about thirty yards from the stockade, I cast a glance over my shoulder towards the house that had given me shelter.  It rose, sad-coloured and solitary, between the green and blue.  But, if it was not fancy, Mr. Gulliver stood looking down on me from the very window whence I had looked down on him.  And there I do not doubt he stayed till his fellow-yahoo had passed across his inhospitable lands out of his sight for ever.