"I have not the slightest objection to answer your question, Mrs. Cathcart; and if our friend Mr. Smith does not want to hear the answer, I will wait till he stops his ears." He glanced to me, his black eyes twinkling with fun. I saw that it was all he could do to keep from winking; but he did. "Oh no," I answered; "I will share what is going." "Well, then, the fool is a real character, in every point. But I learned after I had written the sketch, that I had made one mistake. He was in reality about seventeen, when he was found on the hill. The bell is a real character too. Elsie is a creature of my own. So of course are the brother and the dog." "I don't know whether to be glad or sorry that there was no Elsie," said his wife. "But did you know the fool yourself?" "Perfectly well, and had a great respect for him. When a little boy, I was quite proud of the way he behaved to me. He occasionally visited the general persecution of the boys, upon any boy he chanced to meet on the road; but as often as I met him, he walked quietly past me, muttering '_Auntie's folk_!' or returning my greeting of _'A fine day, Colonel!'_ with a grunted _'Ay!'_" "What did he mean by 'Auntie's folk?'" asked Mrs. Armstrong. "My grandmother was kind to him, and he always called her _Auntie_. I cannot tell how the fancy originated; but certainly he knew all her descendants somehow--a degree of intelligence not to have been expected of him--and invariably murmured 'Auntie's folk,' as often as he passed any of them on the road, as if to remind himself that these were friends, or relations. Possibly he had lived with an aunt before he was exposed on the moor." "Is _wow_ a word at all?" I asked. "If you look into Jamieson's Dictionary," said Armstrong, "as I have done for the express purpose, you will find that the word is used differently in different quarters of the country--chiefly, however, as a verb. It means _to bark, to howl;_ likewise _to wave or beckon;_ also _to woo, or make love to_. Any of these might be given as an explanation of his word. But I do not think it had anything to do with these meanings; nor was the word used, in that district, in either of the last two senses, in my time at least. It was used, however, in the meaning of _alas_--a form of _woe_ in fact; as _wow's me!_ But I believe it was, in the fool's use, an attempt to reproduce the sound which the bell made. If you repeat the word several times, resting on the final _w_, and pausing between each repetition--_wow! wow! wow!_--you will find that the sound is not at all unlike the tolling of a funeral bell; and therefore the word is most probably an onomatopoetic invention of the fool's own."