“He’s an itch on the skin of my lord that he can’t scratch away;” and, with these coarse, enigmatic words, he motioned me to fall behind. The tower sprouted clean from the grass. Reaching and skirting it, I had occasion barely to notice a figure seated under a low door against its farther angle, before the liveliest prospect below engaged all my attention. The hill went down on this side into a wide valley, in the midst of whose trees and pastures, dominating a tiny village with forge and tavern, stood a great old house of grey stone. On the green before, as we could see, was a merry-making: sports, and dancing, and long tables spread, and a vast broaching of casks. And the villagers in their ribbons were all there, so that my eyes and my heart danced to see them. But my companion stood looking down with a most venomous expression. “Fah! A nest of heretics!” he muttered. “What golden calf are they met to worship?” “The red herring’s spawn, good sir,” said the voice of the creature behind us. I turned and stared at him for the first time. He sat sucking at a long pipe at the open door of the tower--the filthiest little scrub you could imagine. His face was like old crumpled parchment, his crafty eyes floated in rheum, and he scratched a dusty tag of beard down upon his breast as he leered at us. “What! Lousy John,” said the priest. “Is it our heir of all the Herrings come of age?” “Ay,” said the old wretch. “Nephew Salted. You know him? Ay, ay. You should be the man Pope, of course, by your rudeness? Go down to your whore of Babylon, sir. She mingles with yonder company.” “You’d have me into the range of your burning-glass, hey?” said the priest, with a snort between laughter and contempt. The other smoked on unperturbed. “All in good time, priest,” he said. “I’m not for anticipatin’ the devil. Is that his scriptures you’re a-carryin’ to propagate?” My companion uttered a furious exclamation, and, hugging his book, shuffled out of range. Most like a woman, he could not bear to have his spiteful humour returned upon him. I understood nothing of all this, of course, and was standing bewildered, when the old obscenity beckoned me. “See,” he said, taking his pipe from his mouth and pointing with the scarlet tongue of it: “a beautiful landscape, ain’t it?” “Yes,” I faltered. “Ah!” said he. “I’ll tell you--just you, mind. I don’t take a-many into my confidence. It’s the beauty of pain, child; a local inflammation in the system.” I murmured something, and he chuckled. “They call this tower ‘Rupert’s Folly,’” he said privately; “and I laugh, settin’ up here in my shell. D’ye think they’d laugh too, if they guessed where the smut came from that blasted of their crops?” “From you?” I whispered. He bent over, and pointed upwards. For the first time I noticed that the muzzle of a telescope projected from the little dome on the roof. While I was gazing, I suddenly felt my wrist in the clutch of his apish claw.