"
'I don't know what I answered at first; but the fellow understood me
when I shook his hand frantically, and told him that I should thank
him to the last day of my life, and that I would not have missed it
for a thousand pounds. In part-proof whereof I gave him a sovereign
on the spot, which seemed to clear my character in his eyes as much
as the crying at the sight of a herd of deer had mystified it.'
'Claude, well-beloved,' said I, 'will you ever speak contemptuously
of sportsmen any more?'
'"Do manus," I have been vilifying them, as one does most things in
the world, only for want of understanding them. How shall I do
penance? Go and take service with Edwin Landseer, as pupil, colour-
grinder, footboy?'
'You will then be very near to a very great poet,' quoth I, 'and one
whose works will become, as centuries roll on, more and more valuable
to art and to science, and, possibly, to something higher than
either.'
'I begin to guess your meaning,' answered Claude.
'So we lounged, and dreamt, and fished, in heathery Highland,' as Mr.
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