pleased with the relief, disgorged itself of all "its perilous
stuff,"--not chiding, not even remonstrating, seeming almost to
sympathize, till I got him, Socratically, to disprove himself.
When I saw that he no longer feared me, that my company had become
a relief to him, I proposed an excursion, and did not tell him
whither.

Avoiding as much as possible the main north road (for I did not
wish, as you may suppose, to set fire to a train of associations
that might blow us up to the dog-star), and where that avoidance
was not possible, travelling by night, I got him into the
neighborhood of the old Tower.

I would not admit him under its roof. But you know the little inn,
three miles off, near the trout stream? We made our abode there.

Well, I have taken him into the village, preserving his incognito.
I have entered with him into cottages, and turned the talk upon
Roland. You know how your uncle is adored; you know what anecdotes
of his bold, warm-hearted youth once, and now of his kind and
charitable age, would spring up from the garrulous lips of
gratitude! I made him see with his own eyes, hear with his own
ears, how all who knew Roland loved and honored him,--except his
son. Then I took him round the ruins (still not suffering him to
enter the house); for those ruins are the key to Roland's
character,--seeing them, one sees the pathos in his poor foible of
family pride. There, you distinguish it from the insolent boasts
of the prosperous, and feel that it is little more than the pious
reverence to the dead, "the tender culture of the tomb." We sat
down on heaps of mouldering stone, and it was there that I