the hour was
late and I felt the need of sleep.

"He gives us our food," said my uncle, when we were at length in the
courtyard. "We have enough of everything needful--but little meat. It
destroys mental power. It is fools' food."

Next day my uncle was unable to leave his bed. I determined to go to
the hotel for my baggage and to post some letters, one of which gave Mr.
Earl an account of my experiences since the October night when I became
an inmate of that house.

It was midwinter now, and the long stretches of pasturage and meadow
land outside the walls were blasted and sere when the old mute, whom I
had seen twice before, let me out of the big gate. When I returned he
was there to open the gate for me and help me with my baggage.

I found Rayel at his father's bedside. The sick man was asleep, and I
went at once to the library, where Rayel soon came, as was his custom
in the afternoon, for a lesson in talking. Both my uncle and myself had
taken great pains to teach him this accomplishment, and his progress
had been even more rapid than we thought possible. He caught the
significance of words with astonishing ease, but found some difficulty
in producing their sound. He went about it with great patience, however,
repeating the hardest words after me until he was able to pronounce them
correctly. But although the work was often tedious we both got much fun
out of it. I had never heard the sound of laughter in that house. One
day I broke its solemn spell by laughing heartily at the grotesque
distortion of my cousin's face incidental to the production of a
difficult sound. He stopped suddenly and looked at me, half alarmed.
This made me laugh more heartily, and he grasped my hand with the
serious air of a physician feeling the pulse of his patient.
Being assured there was no danger, he indulged in a little offhand
cachinnation himself and was, I judged, well pleased with the trial, for
he repeated it frequently afterward, and greatly to his amusement.

The word "woman," and others related to it, puzzled him not a little,
for he had never seen a woman, except through the medium of my own mind
and that of his father. The subject interested him, and he gave much
serious thought to it, questioning me closely at some of our interviews,
as if dissatisfied with the idea conveyed to him. Our discussions,
however, had reached some slumbering chord in him, which, once touched,
stirred his blood with its vibrations. I do not