king mine at present.'

Temple started and reddened like a little fellow detected in straying
from his spelling-book, which was the window-frame. In a minute or so
the fascination proved too strong for him; his eyes wandered from the
window and he renewed his shy inspection bit by bit as if casting up a
column of figures.

'Yes, Mr. Temple, we are in high Germany,' said my father.

It must have cost Temple cruel pain, for he was a thoroughly gentlemanly
boy, and he could not resist it. Finally he surprised himself in his
stealthy reckoning: arrived at the full-breech or buttoned waistband,
about half-way up his ascent from the red silk stocking, he would pause
and blink rapidly, sometimes jump and cough.

To put him at his ease, my father exclaimed, 'As to this exterior,' he
knocked his knuckles on the heaving hard surface, 'I can only affirm
that it was, on horseback--ahem! particularly as the horse betrayed
no restivity, pronounced perfect! The sole complaint of our interior
concerns the resemblance we bear to a lobster. Human somewhere, I do
believe myself to be. I shall have to be relieved of my shell before I
can at all satisfactorily proclaim the fact. I am a human being, believe
me.'

He begged permission to take breath a minute.

'I know you for my son's friend, Mr. Temple: here is my son, my boy,
Harry Lepel Richmond Roy. Have patience: I shall presently stand
unshelled. I have much to relate; you likewise have your narrative in
store. That you should have lit on me at the critical instant is one
of those miracles which combine to produce overwhelming testimony--ay,
Richie! without a doubt there is a hand directing our destiny.' His
speaking in such a strain, out of pure kindness to Temple, huskily,
with his painful attempt to talk like himself, revived his image as the
father of my heart and dreams, and stirred my torpid affection, though
it was still torpid enough, as may be imagined, when I state that I
remained plunged in contemplation of his stocking of red silk emerging
from the full bronzed breech, considering whether his comparison of
himself to a shell-fish might not be a really just one. We neither of us
regained our true natures until he was free of every vestige of the
garb of Prince Albrecht Wohlgemuth. Attendants were awaiting him at the
garden-gate of a beautiful villa partly girdled by rising fir-woods
on its footing of bright green meadow. They led him away, and us to
bath-rooms.