Poor Tom took this mistimed merriment in very good part, generally answering with a ghastly contortion which he meant for a smile, or, if he did trouble himself to find words, with, “Well, that’s funny!  What makes you laugh?  At me, I suppose?  I don’t wonder at it; I often laugh at myself.”

Tom would have been a treasure to an undertaker.  He would have been celebrated as a mute; he looked as if he had been born in a shroud, and rocked in a coffin.  The gravity with which he could answer a ridiculous or impertinent question completely disarmed and turned the shafts of malice back upon his opponent.  If Tom was himself an object of ridicule to many, he had a way of quietly ridiculing others that bade defiance to all competition.  He could quiz with a smile, and put down insolence with an incredulous stare.  A grave wink from those dreamy eyes would destroy the veracity of a travelled dandy for ever.

Tom was not without use in his day and generation; queer and awkward as he was, he was the soul of truth and honour.  You might suspect his sanity—­a matter always doubtful—­but his honesty of heart and purpose, never.

When you met Tom in the streets, he was dressed with such neatness and care (to be sure it took him half the day to make his toilet), that it led many persons to imagine that this very ugly young man considered himself an Adonis; and I must confess that I rather inclined to this opinion.  He always paced the public streets with a slow, deliberate tread, and with his eyes fixed intently on the ground—­like a man who had lost his ideas, and was diligently employed in searching for them.  I chanced to meet him one day in this dreamy mood.

“How do you do, Mr. Wilson?” He stared at me for several minutes, as if doubtful of my presence or identity.

“What was that you said?”

I repeated the question; and he answered, with one of his incredulous smiles—­

“Was it to me you spoke?  Oh, I am quite well, or I should not be walking here.  By the way, did you see my dog?”

“How should I know your dog?”

“They say he resembles me.  He’s a queer dog, too; but I never could find out the likeness.  Good night!”

This was at noonday; but Tom had a habit of taking light for darkness, and darkness for light, in all he did or said.  He must have had different eyes and ears, and a different way of seeing, hearing, and comprehending, than is possessed by the generality of his species; and to such a length did he carry this abstraction of soul and sense, that he would often leave you abruptly in the middle of a sentence; and if you chanced to meet him some weeks after, he would resume the conversation with the very word at which he had cut short the thread of your discourse.

A lady once told him in jest that her youngest brother, a lad of twelve years old, had called his donkey Braham, in honour of the great singer of that name.  Tom made no answer, but started abruptly away.  Three months after, she happened to encounter him on the same spot, when he accosted her, without any previous salutation,