as he meant that it should. But I, who was with him, knew, though he
never talked of his wounds, they had been driven into his heart. He
collapsed in speech, and became what he used to call 'one of the ordinary
nodding men,' forsaken of his swamping initiative. I merely observed
him; I did not invite his confidences, being myself in no mood to give
sympathy or to receive it. I was about as tender in my care of him as a
military escort bound to deliver up a captive alive.

I left him at Bulsted on my way to London to face the creditors.
Adversity had not lowered the admiration of the captain and his wife for
the magnificent host of those select and lofty entertainments which I was
led by my errand to examine in the skeleton, and with a wonder as big as
theirs, but of another complexion: They hung about him, and perused and
petted him quaintly; it was grotesque; they thought him deeply injured:
by what, by whom, they could not say; but Julia was disappointed in me
for refraining to come out with a sally on his behalf. He had quite
intoxicated their imaginations. Julia told me of the things he did not
do as marvellingly as of the things he did or had done; the charm, it
seemed, was to find herself familiar with him to the extent of all but
nursing him and making him belong to her. Pilgrims coming upon the
source of the mysteriously-abounding river, hardly revere it the less
because they love it more when they behold the babbling channels it
issues from; and the sense of possession is the secret, I suppose. Julia
could inform me rapturously that her charge had slept eighteen hours at a
spell. His remarks upon the proposal to fetch a doctor, feeble in
themselves, were delicious to her, because they recalled his old humour
to show his great spirit, and from her and from Captain William in turn I
was condemned to hear how he had said this and that of the doctor, which
in my opinion might have been more concise. 'Really, deuced good
indeed!' Captain William would exclaim. 'Don't you see it, Harry, my