he be a giant, or there be more than one of them--then here is a better
ally than mere bone and sinew." Yorke took out of a drawer a
life-preserver, made of lead and whalebone, struck with it once, to test
its weight and elasticity, then slipped it into his shooting-jacket
pocket. "That will enlarge their organs of locality," said he, grimly;
"they will not forget the Decoy Pond in a hurry whose heads knock
against this."

He made a better supper than was usual with him that night; filled his
pocket-flask with brandy, and his pouch with tobacco; and then making
sure that the whistle Grange had given him, and which he had hung round
his neck, was within easy reach of his fingers, sallied out, well
wrapped up as to his throat, and with his hands in his pockets. If
Richard Yorke was doomed not to have life made easy for him, he made it
as easy as he could. He never omitted a precaution, unless it gave him
trouble to take it out of proportion to the advantage it conferred; he
was never imprudent, unless the passion of the moment was too strong for
him; but sometimes, unfortunately, his mere whims were in their
intensity passions, and his passions, while they lasted, fits of
madness. He was a landscape-painter, partly because he had some taste
that way, but chiefly because he hated regular work of any sort. He had
no real love for his art, and not the least touch of poetic feeling. He
knew an oak from a beech-tree, and the sort of touch that should be used
in delineating the foliage of each; a yellow primrose was to him a
yellow primrose, and he could mix the colors deftly enough which made up
its hue. His education had been by no means neglected, but it had been
of a strange sort; every thing he had learned was, as it were, for
immediate use, and of a superficial but attractive character. The
advocates of a classical curriculum would have shaken their heads at
what Richard Yorke did know, almost as severely as at his lack of