wonderful; and to have a woman stand by and admire his achievements,
warmed his heart like sunshine. Yet he was as cowardly as he was
powerful, and felt no shame in owning to the weakness. Something was
once wanted from the crazy platform over the shaft, and he at once
refused to venture there--"did not like," as he said, "foolin' round
them kind o' places," and let my wife go instead of him, looking on with
a grin. Vanity, where it rules, is usually more heroic; but Irvine
steadily approved himself, and expected others to approve him; rather
looked down upon my wife, and decidedly expected her to look up to him,
on the strength of his superior prudence.

Yet the strangest part of the whole matter was perhaps this, that Irvine
was as beautiful as a statue. His features were, in themselves, perfect;
it was only his cloudy, uncouth, and coarse expression that disfigured
them. So much strength residing in so spare a frame was proof sufficient
of the accuracy of his shape. He must have been built somewhat after the
pattern of Jack Sheppard; but the famous housebreaker, we may be
certain, was no lout. It was by the extraordinary powers of his mind no
less than by the vigour of his body, that he broke his strong prison
with such imperfect implements, turning the very obstacles to surface.
Irvine, in the same case, would have sat down and spat, and grumbled
curses. He had the soul of a fat sheep; but, regarded as an artist's
model, the exterior of a Greek god. It was a cruel thought to persons
less favoured in their birth, that this creature, endowed--to use the
language of theatres--with extraordinary "means," should so manage to
misemploy them that he looked ugly and almost deformed. It was only by
an effort of abstraction, and after many days, that you discovered what
he was.

By playing on the oaf's conceit, and standing closely over him, we got a
path made round the corner of the dump to our door, so that we could
come and go with decent ease; and he even enjoyed the work, for in that
there were boulders to be plucked up bodily, bushes to be uprooted, and
other occasions for athletic display: but cutting wood was a different
matter. Anybody could cut wood; and, besides, my wife was tired of
supervising him, and had other things to attend to. And in short, days
went by, and Irvine came daily, and talked and lounged and spat; but the
firewood remained intact as sleepers on the platform or growing trees
upon the mountain-s