and to tell you the honest
truth, my friend, in your present condition--in your present
condition, mind you--your appearance is perhaps somewhat--startling.
Shall we say, startling?"

In answer to my uncle's apologetic hesitation the stranger merely
spread out his palms and shrugged his shoulders.

"Ah, yes. A foreigner evidently. Well, well, although our coast is
not precisely hospitable, I believe its inhabitants are at any rate
free from that reproach. Jasper, my boy, can you walk now? If so,
Joseph here will see you home, and we will do our best for the--the--
foreign gentleman thus unceremoniously cast on our shores."

My uncle seemed to regard magnificence of speech as the natural due
of a foreigner: whether from some hazy conception of "foreign
politeness," or a hasty deduction that what was not the language of
one part of the world must be that of another, I cannot say. At any
rate, the fishermen regarded him approvingly as the one man who
could--if human powers were equal to it--extricate them from the
present deadlock.

"You do not happen, my friend, to be in a position to inform us
whether any--pardon the expression--any corpses are now lying on the
rocks to bear witness to this sad catastrophe?"

Again the stranger made a gesture of perplexity.

"Dear, dear! I forgot. Jasper, when you get home, read very
carefully that passage about the Tower of Babel. Whatever the cause
of that melancholy confusion, its reality is impressed upon us when
we stand face to face with one whom I may perhaps be allowed to call,
metaphorically, a dweller in Mesopotamia."

As no one answered, my uncle took silence for consent, and called him
so twice--to his own great satisfaction and the obvious awe of the
fishermen.

"It is evident," he continued, "that this gentleman (call him by what
name you will) is in immediate need of food and raiment. If such, as
I do not doubt, can be obtained at Polkimbra, our best course is to
accompany him thither. I trust my proposition meets with his
approval."

It met, at any rate, with the approval of the fishermen, who
translated Uncle Loveday's speech into gestures. Being answered with
a nod of the head and a few hasty foreign words, they began to lead
the stranger away in their midst. As he turned to go, he glanced for
the last time at me with a strange flickering smile, at which my
heart grew sick. Uncle Loveday lingered behind to adjure Joe to be
careful of me as we w