amongst these heavy men a being lithe, supple, and long-limbed, straight
like a pine with something striving upwards in his appearance as though
the heart within him had been buoyant. Perhaps it was only the force of
the contrast, but when he was passing one of these villagers here, the
soles of his feet did not seem to me to touch the dust of the road. He
vaulted over the stiles, paced these slopes with a long elastic stride
that made him noticeable at a great distance, and had lustrous black
eyes. He was so different from the mankind around that, with his freedom
of movement, his soft--a little startled, glance, his olive complexion
and graceful bearing, his humanity suggested to me the nature of a
woodland creature. He came from there."

The doctor pointed with his whip, and from the summit of the descent
seen over the rolling tops of the trees in a park by the side of the
road, appeared the level sea far below us, like the floor of an immense
edifice inlaid with bands of dark ripple, with still trails of glitter,
ending in a belt of glassy water at the foot of the sky. The light blur
of smoke, from an invisible steamer, faded on the great clearness of the
horizon like the mist of a breath on a mirror; and, inshore, the white
sails of a coaster, with the appearance of disentangling themselves
slowly from under the branches, floated clear of the foliage of the
trees.

"Shipwrecked in the bay?" I said.

"Yes; he was a castaway. A poor emigrant from Central Europe bound to
America and washed ashore here in a storm. And for him, who knew nothing
of the earth, England was an undiscovered country. It was some time
before he learned its name; and for all I know he might have expected to
find wild beasts or wild men here, when, crawling in the dark over