boots; then turned his eyes upon his own hand and coarsely clad arm
stretched across the cask. "I, too, am a gentleman, the brother of a
chieftain," he declared. "I am not without schooling. I have seen
something of life, and of countries more polite than the land where I was
born, though not so dear. I have been free, and have loved my freedom. Do
you find it so strange that I should hate you?"

There was a silence; then, "Upon my soul, I do not know that I do," said
Haward slowly. "And yet, until this day I did not know of your existence."

"But I knew of yours," answered the storekeeper. "Your agent hath an
annoying trick of speech, and the overseers have caught it from him. 'Your
master' this, and 'your master' that; in short, for ten years it hath
been, 'Work, you dog, that your master may play!' Well, I have worked; it
was that, or killing myself, or going mad. I have worked for you in the
fields, in the smithy, in this close room. But when you bought my body,
you could not buy my soul. Day after day, and night after night, I sent it
away; I would not let it bide in these dull levels, in this cursed land of
heat and stagnant waters. At first it went home to its own country,--to
its friends and its foes, to the torrent and the mountain and the music of
the pipes; but at last the pain outweighed the pleasure, and I sent it
there no more. And then it began to follow you."

"To follow me!" involuntarily exclaimed Haward.

"I have been in London," went on the other, without heeding the
interruption. "I know the life of men of quality, and where they most
resort. I early learned from your other servants, and from the chance
words of those who had your affairs in charge, that you were young,
well-looking, a man of pleasure. At first when I thought of you the blood