“Clever! it’s the creatures that are clever. Did you ever see a bird make a fuss to get you off where her nest was? A woman wouldn’t have sense to do that. She’d run and shriek, and get hold of her bairns; but the bird’s clever. That’s what I calls clever. It’s something stranger than that. When a man’s beside you, all’s different; there’s him thinking and you thinking; and though you’re close, and I can grip you”--here Bampfylde seized upon Geoff with a sudden, startling grasp, which alarmed the young man--“I can’t tell no more than Adam where your mind is. Asking your pardon, my young lord, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he added, dropping his hold. “Now the creatures is all there; you know where you have ’em. Far the contrary with a man.” Geoff was not given to abstract thoughts, and this sudden entry into the regions of the undiscovered perplexed him. “You like company, then?” he said, doubtfully. He knew a great deal more than his companion did of almost everything that could be suggested, but not of this. “Like company? it’s confusing, very confusing. But the creatures is simple. You can watch their ways, and they’re never double-minded. They’re at one thing, one thing at a time. Now, a man, there’s notions in his head, and you can never tell how they got there.” “I suppose,” said young Geoff, perplexed yet reverential, “it is because men are immortal; not like the beasts that perish.” “Ay, ay--I suppose they perish,” said Bampfylde. “What would they be like us for, and sicken, and pine? They get the good of it all the time; run wild as they like, and do mischief as they like, and never put in gaol for it. You think they’re sleeping now? and so they are, and waking too--as still as the stones and as lively as the stars up yonder. That’s them; but us, if we’re sleeping, it’s for hours long, and dreams with it; one bit of you lying like a log, t’other bit of you off at the ends of the airth. So, if you’re woke sudden, chances are you aren’t there to be woke--and there’s a business; but the creatures, they’re always there.” “That is true,” said Geoff, who was slightly overawed, and thought this very fine and poetical--finer than anything he had ever realized before. “But sometimes they are ill, I suppose, and suffer too?” “Then them that is merciful puts them out of their pain. The hardest-hearted ones will do that. A bird with a broken wing, or a beast with a broken leg, unless it be one of the gentlefolks’ pets, that’s half mankind, and has to suffer for it because his master’s fond of him (and that’s funny too)--the worst of folks will put them out of their pain. But a man--we canna’ do it,” cried the vagrant; “there’s law again’ it, and more than law. If it was nothing but law, little the likes of me would mind; but there’s something written here,” he said, putting his hand to his breast; “something that hinders you.” “I hope so indeed,” said Geoff, a little breathless, with a sense of horror; “you would not take away a life?”