‘It’s a fellow calling from the downs,’ said Evan.

‘Ay, so!’ responded the waggoner.  ’Dang’d if I didn’t think ’twere that Gearge of our’n.  Hark awhile.’

At a repetition of the call, the waggoner stopped his team.  After a few minutes, a man appeared panting on the bank above them, down which he ran precipitately, knocked against Evan, apologized with the little breath that remained to him, and then held his hand as to entreat a hearing.  Evan thought him half-mad; the waggoner was about to imagine him the victim of a midnight assault.  He undeceived them by requesting, in rather flowery terms, conveyance on the road and rest for his limbs.  It being explained to him that the waggon was already occupied, he comforted himself aloud with the reflection that it was something to be on the road again for one who had been belated, lost, and wandering over the downs for the last six hours.

‘Walcome to git in, when young woman gits out,’ said the waggoner.  ’I’ll gi’ ye my sleep on t’ Hillford.’

‘Thanks, worthy friend,’ returned the new comer.  ’The state of the case is this—­I’m happy to take from humankind whatsoever I can get.  If this gentleman will accept of my company, and my legs hold out, all will yet be well.’

Though he did not wear a petticoat, Evan was not sorry to have him.  Next to the interposition of the Gods, we pray for human fellowship when we are in a mess.  So he mumbled politely, dropped with him a little to the rear, and they all stepped out to the crack of the waggoner’s whip.

‘Rather a slow pace,’ said Evan, feeling bound to converse.

‘Six hours on the downs makes it extremely suitable to me,’ rejoined the stranger,

‘You lost your way?’

’I did, sir.  Yes; one does not court those desolate regions wittingly.  I am for life and society.  The embraces of Diana do not agree with my constitution.  If classics there be who differ from me, I beg them to take six hours on the downs alone with the moon, and the last prospect of bread and cheese, and a chaste bed, seemingly utterly extinguished.  I am cured of my romance.  Of course, when I say bread and cheese, I speak figuratively.  Food is implied.’

Evan stole a glance at his companion.

‘Besides,’ the other continued, with an inflexion of grandeur, ’for a man accustomed to his hunters, it is, you will confess, unpleasant—­I speak’ hypothetically—­to be reduced to his legs to that extent that it strikes him shrewdly he will run them into stumps.’

The stranger laughed.

The fair lady of the night illumined his face, like one who recognized a subject.  Evan thought he knew the voice.  A curious struggle therein between native facetiousness and an attempt at dignity, appeared to Evan not unfamiliar; and the egregious failure of ambition and triumph of the instinct, helped him to join, the stranger in his mirth.

‘Jack Raikes?’ he said:  ‘surely?’