"Dear, dear! I forgot. Jasper, when you get home, read very carefully that passage about the Tower of Babel. Whatever the cause of that melancholy confusion, its reality is impressed upon us when we stand face to face with one whom I may perhaps be allowed to call, metaphorically, a dweller in Mesopotamia." As no one answered, my uncle took silence for consent, and called him so twice--to his own great satisfaction and the obvious awe of the fishermen. "It is evident," he continued, "that this gentleman (call him by what name you will) is in immediate need of food and raiment. If such, as I do not doubt, can be obtained at Polkimbra, our best course is to accompany him thither. I trust my proposition meets with his approval." It met, at any rate, with the approval of the fishermen, who translated Uncle Loveday's speech into gestures. Being answered with a nod of the head and a few hasty foreign words, they began to lead the stranger away in their midst. As he turned to go, he glanced for the last time at me with a strange flickering smile, at which my heart grew sick. Uncle Loveday lingered behind to adjure Joe to be careful of me as we went up the cliff, and then, with a promise that he would run in to see mother later in the day, trotted after the rest. They passed out of sight through the archway of Dead Man's Rock. For a minute or so we plodded across the sand in silence. Joe Roscorla was Uncle Loveday's "man," a word in our parts connoting ability to look after a horse, a garden, a pig or two, or, indeed, anything that came in the way of being looked after. At the present moment I came in that way; consequently, after some time spent in reflective silence, Joe began to speak. "You'm looking wisht." "Am I, Joe?" "Mortal." There was a pause: then Joe continued-- "I don't hold by furriners: let alone they be so hard to get along with in the way of convarsing, they be but a heathen lot. But, Jasper, warn't it beautiful?" "What, Joe?" "Why, to see the doctor tackle the lingo. Beautiful, I culls it; but there, he's a scholard, and no mistake, and 'tain't no good for to say he ain't. Not as ever I've heerd it said." "But, Joe, the man didn't seem to understand him." "Durn all furriners, say I; they be so cursed pigheaded. Understand? I'll go bail he understood fast enough." Joe's opinions coincided so fatally with my certainty that I held my tongue. "A dweller in--what did he call the spot, Jasper?" "Mesopotamia." "Well, I can't azacly say as I've seen any from them parts, but they be all of a piece. Thicky chap warn't in the way when prettiness was sarved out, anyhow. Of all the cut-throat chaps as ever I see--Mark my words, 'tain't no music as he's come after." This seemed so indisputable that I did not venture to contradict it.