Eustace and Richardson had disinterred and brushed up Harold’s only black suit (ordered as mourning for his wife, and never worn but at his uncle’s funeral); but three years’ expansion of chest and shoulder had made it pinion him so as to lessen the air of perfect ease which, without being what is called grace, was goodly to look upon.  Eustace’s studs were in his shirt, and the unnatural shine on his tawny hair too plainly revealed the perfumeries that crowded the young squire’s dressing-table.  With the purest intentions of kindness Eustace had done his best to disguise a demigod as a lout.

We had a diner a la Russe, to satisfy Eustace’s aspirations as to the suitable.  I had been seeking resources for it all the afternoon and building up erections with Richardson and Colman; and when poor Harold, who had been out in the snow with nothing to eat since breakfast, beheld it, he exclaimed, “Lucy, why did you not tell me?  I could have gone over to Mycening and brought you home a leg of mutton.”

“Don’t expose what a cub you are!” muttered the despairing Eustace.  “It is a deena a la Roos.”

“I thought the Russians ate blubber,” observed Harold, somewhat unfeelingly, though I don’t think he saw the joke; but I managed to reassure him, sotto voce, as to there being something solid in the background.  He was really ravenous, and it was a little comedy to see the despairing contempt with which he regarded the dainty little mouthfuls that the cook viewed with triumph, and Eustace in equal misery at his savage appetite; while Lord Erymanth, far too real a gentleman to be shocked at a man’s eating when he was hungry, was quite insensible of the by-play until Harold, reduced to extremity at sight of one delicate shaving of turkey’s breast, burst out, “I say, Richardson, I must have some food.  Cut me its leg, please, at once!”

“Harry,” faintly groaned Eustace, while Lord Erymanth observed, “Ah! there is no such receipt for an appetite as shooting in the snow.  I remember when a turkey’s leg would have been nothing to me, after being out duck-shooting in Kalydon Bog.  Have you been there to-day?  There would be good sport.”

“No,” said Harold, contented at last with the great leg, which seemed in the same proportion to him as a chicken’s to other men.  “I have been getting sheep out of the snow.”

I elicited from him that he had, in making his way to Erymanth, heard the barking of a dog, and found that a shepherd and his flock had taken refuge in a hollow of the moor, which had partly protected them from the snow, but whence they could not escape.  The shepherd, a drover who did not know the locality, had tried with morning light to find his way to help, but, spent and exhausted, would soon have perished, had not Harold been attracted by the dog.  After dragging him to the nearest farm, Harold left the man to be restored by food and fire, while performing his own commission at the castle, and then returned to spend the remainder of the daylight hours in helping to extricate the sheep, and convey them to the farmyard, so that only five had been lost.