his good heart not having recovered the shock of having been abominably
"taken in" by an impostor for whom he had conceived a great fancy, and to
whose discovery George himself had providentially led (the father
referred here to what George had told him of his first meeting with
Waife, and his visit to Mrs. Crane); the impostor, it seemed, from what
Mr. Hartopp let fall, not being a little queer in the head, as George had
been led to surmise, but a very bad character. "In fact," added the
elder Morley, "a character so bad that Mr. Hartopp was too glad to give
up to her lawful protectors the child, whom the man appears to have
abducted; and I suspect, from what Hartopp said, though he does not like
to own that he was taken in to so gross a degree, that he had been
actually introducing to his fellow-townsfolk and conferring familiarly
with a regular jail-bird,--perhaps a bur glar. How lucky for that poor,
soft-headed, excellent Jos Hartopp, whom it is positively as inhuman to
take in as it would be to defraud a born natural, that the lady you saw
arrived in time to expose the snares laid for his benevolent credulity.
But for that, Jos might have taken the fellow into his own house (just
like him!), and been robbed by this time, perhaps murdered,--Heaven
knows!"

Incredulous and indignant, and longing to be empowered to vindicate his
friend's fair name, George seized his hat, and strode quick along the
path towards the basketmaker's cottage. As he gained the water-side,
he perceived Waife himself, seated on a mossy bank, under a gnarled
fantastic thorntree, watching a deer as it came to drink, and whistling a
soft mellow tune,--the tune of an old English border-song. The deer
lifted his antlers from the water, and turned his large bright eyes
towards the opposite bank, whence the note came, listening and wistful.
As George's step crushed the wild thyme, which the thorn-tree shadowed,
"Hush!" said Waife, "and mark how the rudest musical sound can affect the