An access of shyness led him to ask for Judith when he went up to the great house that evening; but he was just a trifle disappointed when she joined him, bearing the promised armful of literature, and when he realised that he was not to see his benefactress. Nothing, however, forbade him to talk about her, nor did he say much about anybody or anything else during an interview which took place by starlight in the stable-yard. Judith, who was greatly attached to her mistress, was as laudatory as could be wished, if not particularly informing. Miss Mildred was always doing kind things; so Judith did not think it strange that she should lend books to Jan Issel if he wanted them; though it was perhaps rather strange that he should want them. She timidly intimated as much, but received no answer. It was, of course, impossible to explain to Judy Combe what the printed page meant to one who was consumed with curiosity respecting the world in which we dwell and who had no opportunities of coming into contact with a verbal interpreter. It would likewise have been difficult to bring home to her the motives that such a man might have for adopting the profession of arms; so that subject also was left untouched. For the rest, Jan was eager to say good-night, being still more eager to discover what Miss Mildred thought him capable of appreciating. Miss Mildred, it may be conjectured, had not given a great deal of thought to the matter; but she bestowed quite as much pleasure upon her _protégé_ as if she had. That night and on several successive nights Jan sat up, devouring the volumes by the light of a single candle long after all the other inmates of the farm were asleep. ‘Ivanhoe,’ which was pretty plain sailing, delighted him, as did also Fitchett’s stirring and admirably related yarns. If he could not always make out what Tennyson was driving at, he loved the rhythm and melody of his verse, just as he loved the sonorous grandeur of certain chapters in Isaiah and Ecclesiastes, the meaning of which was completely hidden from him. In like manner thousands of people derive genuine enjoyment from listening to a symphony, although they are ignorant of the structure of such compositions and cannot really follow them. But, oddly enough, it was with Carlyle that Jan was best pleased. The bygone abuses and social anomalies against which ‘Past and Present’ thunders naturally said nothing to him, nor could he trace much connection between them and the chronicle of Jocelin of Brakelond. It must also be admitted that he skipped a good many pages. What roused him to enthusiasm was not the writer’s theme but his mastery of language and the magnificent, disdainful carelessness with which he displayed it, as though feeling himself big enough to be independent of all rules. Jan Issel, it must be supposed, possessed the literary sense—which indeed, like every other artistic sense, is inborn, not to be acquired. When he went