t he sayed like, as how he should be down here again about
pheasant shooting.'

'Trust him for it. Let us know, now, if you see him.'

'And that I will, too. I wouldn't save a feather for that 'ere old
rascal, Harry. If the devil don't have he, I don't see no use in
keeping no devil. But I minds them as has mercy on me, though my
name is Crawy. Ay,' he added, bitterly, ''tain't so many kind turns
as I gets in this life, that I can afford to forget e'er a one.'
And he sneaked off, with the deaf dog at his heels.

'How did that fellow get his name, Tregarva?'

'Oh, most of them have nicknames round here. Some of them hardly
know their own real names, sir.' ('A sure sign of low
civilisation,' thought Lancelot.) 'But he got his a foolish way;
and yet it was the ruin of him. When he was a boy of fifteen, he
got miching away in church-time, as boys will, and took off his
clothes to get in somewhere here in this very river, groping in the
banks after craw-fish; and as the devil--for I can think no less--
would have it, a big one catches hold of him by the fingers with one
claw, and a root with the other, and holds him there till Squire
Lavington comes out to take his walk after church, and there he
caught the boy, and gave him a thrashing there and then, naked as he
stood. And the story got wind, and all the chaps round called him
Crawy ever afterwards, and the poor fellow got quite reckless from
that day, and never looked any one in the face again; and being
ashamed of himself, you see, sir, was never ashamed of anything
else--and there he is. That dog's his only friend, and gets a
livelihood for them both. It's growing old now; and when it dies,
he'll starve.'

'Well--the world has no right to blame him for not doing his duty,
till it has done its own by him a little better.'

'But the world will, sir, because it hates its duty, and cries all
day long, like Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?"'

'Do you think it knows its duty? I have found it easy enough to see
that something is diseased, Tregarva; but to find the medicine
first, and to administer it afterwards, is a very different matter.'

'Well--I suppose the world will never be mended till the day of
judgment.'

'In plain English, not mended till it is destroyed. Hopeful for the
poor world! I should fancy, if I believed that, that the devil in
the old history--which you believe--had had the best of it with a
vengean