We all of us have skeletons, large or small, in some cupboard of our lives, but a well regulated skeleton that will stay in its cupboard quietly does not much matter.  There are skeletons, however, which can never be quite trusted not to open the cupboard door at some awkward moment, go down stairs, ring the hall-door bell, with grinning face announce themselves as the skeleton, and ask whether the master or mistress is at home.  This kind of skeleton, though no bigger than a rabbit, will sometimes loom large as that of a dinotherium.  My father was Yram’s skeleton.  True, he was a mere skeleton of a skeleton, for the chances were thousands to one that he and my mother had perished long years ago; and even though he rang at the bell, there was no harm that he either could or would now do to her or hers; still, so long as she did not certainly know that he was dead, or otherwise precluded from returning, she could not be sure that he would not one day come back by the way that he would alone know, and she had rather he should not do so.

Hence, on hearing from Professor Hanky that a man had been seen between the statues and Sunch’ston wearing the old Erewhonian dress, she was disquieted and perplexed.  The excuse he had evidently made to the Professors aggravated her uneasiness, for it was an obvious attempt to escape from an unexpected difficulty.  There could be no truth in it.  Her son would as soon think of wearing the old dress himself as of letting his men do so; and as for having old clothes still to wear out after seventeen years, no one but a Bridgeford Professor would accept this.  She saw, therefore, that she must keep her wits about her, and lead her guests on to tell her as much as they could be induced to do.

“My son,” she said innocently, “is always considerate to his men, and that is why they are so devoted to him.  I wonder which of them it was?  In what part of the preserves did you fall in with him?”

Hanky described the place, and gave the best idea he could of my father’s appearance.

“Of course he was swarthy like the rest of us?”

“I saw nothing remarkable about him, except that his eyes were blue and his eyelashes nearly white, which, as you know, is rare in Erewhon.  Indeed, I do not remember ever before to have seen a man with dark hair and complexion but light eyelashes.  Nature is always doing something unusual.”

“I have no doubt,” said Yram, “that he was the man they call Blacksheep, but I never noticed this peculiarity in him.  If he was Blacksheep, I am afraid you must have found him none too civil; he is a rough diamond, and you would hardly be able to understand his uncouth Sunch’ston dialect.”

“On the contrary, he was most kind and thoughtful—­even so far as to take our permit from us, and thus save us the trouble of giving it up at your son’s office.  As for his dialect, his grammar was often at fault, but we could quite understand him.”