“Pretty well, sir! But I want to tell you first how it is I’m here with Nimrod. Only it would be better to put him somewhere before I begin.” “It would,” agreed the farmer; and between them, with the enticements of a pail of water and some fresh-cut grass, they got him into a shed, where they hoped he would forget the proximity of the usurper, and, with the soothing help of his supper, go to sleep. Then Clare told his story. Mr. Goodenough afterward asseverated that, if he had not known him for a boy that would not lie, he would not have believed the half of it. “Come, Abdiel!” said Clare, the moment he ended--and would have started at once. “Won’t you have something after your long ride?” said the farmer. Clare looked down at his clothes, and laughed. The farmer knew what he meant, and did not ask him into the house. “When had you anything to eat?” he inquired. “I shall do very well till to-morrow,” answered Clare. “Then if you will go, I’m glad of the opportunity of paying you the wages I owed you,” said the farmer, putting his hand in his pocket. “You gave me my food! That was all I was worth!” protested Clare. “You were worth more than that! I knew the difference when I had another boy in your place! I wish I had you again!--But it wouldn’t do, you know! it wouldn’t do!” he added hastily. With that he succeeded in pulling a sovereign from the depth of a trowser-pocket, and held it out to Clare. It was neither large wages nor a greatly generous gift, but it seemed to the boy wealth enormous. He could not help holding out his hand, but he was ashamed to open it. What the giver regarded as a debt, the receiver regarded as a gift. He stood with his hand out but clenched. There was a combat inside him. “It’s too much!” he protested, looking at the sovereign almost with fear. “I never had so much money in my life!” “You earned it well,” said the farmer magnanimously. The moral cramp forsook his hand. He took the money with a hearty “Thank you, sir.” As he put it in his pocket, he felt its corners carefully, lest there should be a hole. But his pockets had not had half the wear of the clothes they inhabited. “Where are you going?” asked the farmer. Clare mentioned the small town in whose neighbourhood he had left the caravans, and said he thought the people of the menagerie would like him to help them with the beasts. The farmer shook his head. “It’s not a respectable occupation!” he remarked. Clare did not understand him. “Do they cheat?” he asked. “No; I don’t suppose they cheat worse than anybody else. But it ain’t respectable.” Had he known a little more, Clare might have asserted that the men about the menagerie were at least as respectable as almost any farmer with a horse to sell. But he knew next to nothing of wickedness, whence many a man whose skull he had brains enough to fill three times, regarded him as a simpleton.