"Perhaps I do," rejoins Patteson, "since other folks soe oft know better what we mean than we know ourselves. Alle I woulde say is, I ne'er set up for a conjuror. One can see as far into a millstone as other people without being that. For example, when a man is overta'en with qualms of conscience for having married his brother's widow, when she is noe longer soe young and fair as she was a score of years ago, we know what that's a sign of. And when an Ipswich butcher's son takes on him the state of my lord pope, we know what that's a sign of. Nay, if a young gentlewoman become dainty at her sizes, and sluttish in her apparel, we ... as I live, here comes John Heron with a fish in's mouth." Poor Bess involuntarilie turned her head quicklie towards y^e watergate, on which Patteson, laughing as he lay on his back, points upward with his peacock's feather, and cries, "Overhead, mistress! see, there he goes. Sure, you lookt not to see Master Heron making towards us between y^e posts and flower-pots, eating a dried ling?" laughing as wildly as though he were verily a natural. Bess, without a word, shook the crumbs from her lap, and was turning into the house, when he witholds her a minute in a perfectly altered fashion, saying, "There be some works, mistress, our confessors tell us be works of supererogation ... is not that y^e word? I learn a long one now and then ... such as be setting food before a full man, or singing to a deaf one, or buying for one's pigs a silver trough, or, for the matter of that, casting pearls before a dunghill cock, or fishing for a heron, which is well able to fish for itself, and is an ill-natured bird after all, that pecks the hand of his mistress, and, for all her kindness to him, will not think of Bessy More." How apt alle are to abuse unlimited license? Yet 'twas good counsel. PHANTOMS AND REALITIES.--AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY.[10] PART THE THIRD--NIGHT. I. The whole color of my life was changed in a single night. Years of excitement could not have wrought such a miracle upon me. The next day, I seemed to have passed out of my former self into a new individual and a new state of existence. I was no longer alone! I was no longer drifting about, aimless and dreamy. There was work for me to do, and the interest I had in it was vivid and engrossing. What had become of the dwarf? Not a trace of him was to be found. I examined the grass, and fancied I could detect two or three dark spots; but there had been heavy showers in the night, and as the mould had been thrown up here and there, discoloring the verdure, I could not determine whether these spots were blood-marks, as I feared, or the mere beating of rain and mire. But I did not trouble myself any further. Our persecutor was gone. That was all we cared to be assured of; and our next step was to escape from a place in which it was no longer safe for us to remain.