Nay; on High!

PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.

URSUS.

I.

Ursus and Homo were fast friends. Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf. Their
dispositions tallied. It was the man who had christened the wolf:
probably he had also chosen his own name. Having found _Ursus_ fit for
himself, he had found _Homo_ fit for the beast. Man and wolf turned
their partnership to account at fairs, at village fetes, at the corners
of streets where passers-by throng, and out of the need which people
seem to feel everywhere to listen to idle gossip and to buy quack
medicine. The wolf, gentle and courteously subordinate, diverted the
crowd. It is a pleasant thing to behold the tameness of animals. Our
greatest delight is to see all the varieties of domestication parade
before us. This it is which collects so many folks on the road of royal
processions.

Ursus and Homo went about from cross-road to cross-road, from the High
Street of Aberystwith to the High Street of Jedburgh, from country-side
to country-side, from shire to shire, from town to town. One market
exhausted, they went on to another. Ursus lived in a small van upon
wheels, which Homo was civilized enough to draw by day and guard by
night. On bad roads, up hills, and where there were too many ruts, or
there was too much mud, the man buckled the trace round his neck and
pulled fraternally, side by side with the wolf. They had thus grown old
together. They encamped at haphazard on a common, in the glade of a
wood, on the waste patch of grass where roads intersect, at the
outskirts of villages, at the gates of towns, in market-places, in
public walks, on the borders of parks, before the entrances of churches.
When the cart drew up on a fair green, when the gossips ran up
open-mouthed and the curious made a circle round the pair, Ursus
harangued and Homo approved. Homo, with a bowl in his mouth, politely
made a collection among the audience. They gained their livelihood. The
wolf was lettered, likewise the man. The wolf had been trained by the
man, or had trained himself unassisted, to divers wolfish arts, which
swelled the receipts. "Above all things, do not degenerate into a man,"
his friend would say to him.

Never did the wolf bite: the man did now and then. At least, to bite was
the intent of Ursus. He was a misanthrope, and to italicize his
misanthropy he had made himself a juggler. To live, also; for the
stomach has to be consulted. Moreover, this juggler-misanthrope, whe