“Deary me, sir!” said Caleb in despair, “I’d no idee ’twas as bad as this, or I wou’dn’ have mentioned the place to ’ee.”

An old barrel stood on end before the French-window of the drawing-room.  Mr. Fogo seated himself on this, and gazed meditatively out on the mellow glory of the evening.

“Caleb,” he said very quietly, after a while, “I think I shall take this house.”

“You will, sir?”

“I fancy there will be no difficulty in arranging about the rent.  And now I want to speak with you on another question.  You are a single man, you say.  Have you any employment?”

“Why, sir, I mostly picks up my livin’ on the say, on’y I thought as how I’d like a spell ashore for a change; but the end o’ that you saw for yourself this very a’ternoon.”

“Do you think that for a pound a week you could look after me?”

“I’d like the chance.”

“That would exclude your food and clothes.”

Caleb hesitated for a moment, and then said, with Trojan independence—­

“You beant’ a-goin’ to rig me out in a yaller weskit an’ small-clothes wi’ a stripe down the leg, by any chance?”

“I was proposing that you should dress exactly as you do at present.”

“Then done wi’ you, sir, an’ thank ’ee.  When be I to enter on my dooties?”

“At once.”

“An’ where, sir?”

“Here.”

“Be you a-goin’ to sleep the night in this moloncholy place?”

“Certainly.”

“Very well, sir.  Please yoursel’, as Dick said to the press-gang.  An’ what be I to do fust?”

Mr. Fogo perhaps did not hear the question, for he was gazing out at the falling shadows:  when he spoke again it was upon another subject.

“It is right that you should know,” said he, “the kind of life you will be wanted to lead.  In the first place, I am extraordinarily subject to fits of abstraction—­absence of mind, in other words.  It is an affection to which my style of life has made me particularly prone:  it has led me before now into absurd, and sometimes into dangerous situations.

“I have heard tell,” said Caleb, “of an old gentl’m’n as carefully tucked hes umbrella in bed an’ put hissel’ in the corner.  Es that the style o’ thing, sir?”

“It is something similar,” said his master, “and within certain limits I should expect you to look after me and as far as possible prevent such accidents:  however, I shall not, of course, expect you to have more than one pair of eyes.  My tastes are simple—­I read a little, sketch a little, botanise, dabble in chemistry, am fond of carpentering—­boat-building especially.  My very absence of mind makes me indifferent to surroundings.  In short, I am a mild man.”

Mr. Fogo got off his barrel, went to the window, sighed softly, and returned.  Something in his manner imposed silence on Caleb.