"You had indorsed it 'Corrected speech.--W. Stafford,'" Atlay replied triumphantly. "Ah!" Mr. Stafford said, dropping his hands and eyes and sitting down suddenly, "I remember! My wife came in, and--yes, my wife came in." THE SURGEON'S GUEST THE SURGEON'S GUEST CHAPTER I. "To be content," said the carrier, "that is half the battle. If I have said it to one, I have said it to a hundred. You be content," says I, "and you will be all right." For the first time, though they had plodded on a mile together, the tall gentleman turned his eyes from the sombre moorland which stretched away on either side of the road, and looked at his companion. There had been something strange in the preoccupation of his thoughts hitherto; though the carrier, lapped in his own loquacity, had not felt it. And, to tell the truth, there had been something still more strange in the tall gentleman's behaviour before their meeting. Now he had raced along the road and now he had loitered; sometimes he had stood still, letting his eyes stray over the dark groups of heather, which lay islanded in a sea of brown grass; and again he had sauntered onwards, his hat in his hand and his face turned up to the sky, which hung low over the waste, and had yet the breadth of a fen cloudscape. Whatever the eccentricity of his lonely movements, his tall hat and fluttering frock-coat had exaggerated it. At length on the summit of one of the ridges over which the road ran he had made a longer halt, and had begun to look about him to right and left, seeking, it seemed, for a track across the moss. Then he had caught sight of the carrier plodding up the next ridge at the tail of his cart, and he had started after him. But having almost overtaken him, he had reduced his pace and loitered as if his desire for human company had faded away. He had even paused as though to return. But a glance at the desolate waste had determined him. He had walked on again, and had overtaken and fallen to talking with the carrier. The latter on his part had been glad to have a companion, and had readily set down what was odd in the stranger's bearing to the cause which accounted for his costume. The tall gentleman was a Londoner. "'You be content,' says I," quoth the old fellow again, his companion's tardy attention encouraging him to repeat his statement, "'and you will be all right.' I have told that to hundreds in my time."