when he changed into the local train that carried him laboriously into
the desolation of the Pontwaun Mountains. "It looks as though he approved
of me already. My name apparently hasn't put him off as it does most
people. Perhaps, through it, he divines the real me!"

He smoothed down his rebellious hair as he neared the station in the
dusk; but he was surprised to find only a rickety little cart drawn by a
donkey sent to meet him (the house being five miles distant in the
hills), and still more surprised when a huge figure of a man, hatless,
dressed in knickerbockers, and with a large, floating grey beard, strode
down the platform as he gave up his ticket to the station-master and
announced himself as Mr. Philip Skale. He had expected the small,
foxy-faced individual of his imagination, and the shock momentarily
deprived him of speech.

"Mr. Spinrobin, of course? I am Mr. Skale--Mr. Philip Skale."

The voice can only be described as booming, it was so deep and vibrating;
but the smile of welcome, where it escaped with difficulty from the
network of beard and moustaches, was winning and almost gentle in
contradistinction to the volume of that authoritative voice. Spinrobin
felt slightly bewildered--caught up into a whirlwind that drove too many
impressions through his brain for any particular one to be seized and
mastered. He found himself shaking hands--Mr. Skale, rather, shaking his,
in a capacious grasp as though it were some small indiarubber ball to be
squeezed and flung away. Mr. Skale flung it away, he felt the shock up
the whole length of his arm to the shoulder. His first impressions, he
declares, he cannot remember--they were too tumultuous--beyond that he
liked both smile and voice, the former making him feel at home, the
latter filling him to the brim with a peculiar sense of well-being. Never