Ernest thought this very like one of Levison’s reflective, unprejudiced speeches, and could imagine his saying it without any feeling of irreverence. Five hundred pounds without a word, unobtrusively, hardly caring to use his own well-known name for fear of the drawbacks and disabilities of proverbial wealth. ’A most extraordinary man truly,’ thought Ernest—‘simple, strong, manifestly of the true hunter type; a man given to lone journeyings through the wilderness; fond of preserving his incognito, and of the small, wellnigh incredible economies which speak to him of his earlier life.’ Now, Mr. Neuchamp saw the secret of the ultra-respectful bearing of the servants and landlord of the inn to the owner of a couple of millions of acres, leasehold, and of more sheep than Esterhazy, and more cattle than a score of Mexican rancheros. ‘He certainly is a man of unpretentious demeanour,’ thought Ernest. ’Whoever would have guessed that he was so tremendous a proprietor! “Don’t you go for to waste your money.” Was that the way he had made the nucleus of this colossal fortune? and did the occasional saving of a meal, and the utilising of the edible plants of the plain and forest dell, go to swell the rills which joined their streams of profit into the great river of his prosperity?‘ Ernest Neuchamp all but resolved to give up speculating upon the character and professions of these provokingly unintelligible colonists, to believe what he saw—even that, with deduction and reason—and to ’learn and labour truly to get his own living,’ without constant reference to the motives and practice of others engaged in the same necessary pursuit. All this he for the time fully believed that he would in the future carry out. But his nature, with its passionate proclivities for intellectual research, continued to whisper of regions of territory and character yet unexplored, and to beckon the ardent champion of light and truth forward even yet, though clouds of distrust and disappointment clustered round his path. Mr. Neuchamp decided to stay where he was that evening, and to take a strictly impartial and prosaic survey of the town and environs. CHAPTER IX