-my Irish
maids doing; bless their warm hearts! He had cobbled up his boots
himself, and his felt hat, which had quite recovered from its drenching,
lay at his side. The perfect rest and warmth and good food had filled
up his hollow cheeks, but still his countenance was a curious one; and
never, until my dying day, can I forget the rapture of entreaty on
that man's upturned face. It brings the tears into my own eyes now to
recollect its beseeching expression. I do not think I ever _saw_ prayer
before or since. He did not perceive me, for I had hidden behind a
sheltering curtain, to listen to his strange, earnest petitions; so he
could not know that anybody in the house was stirring, for he knelt at
the back, and all my fussings had taken place in the front, and he could
not, therefore, have been doing anything for effect.

There, exactly where he had crouched a wretched, way-worn tramp in
pouring rain, he knelt now with the flood of sunshine streaming down
on his uplifted face, whilst he prayed for the welfare and happiness,
individually and collectively, of every living creature within the
house. Then he stood up and lifted his hat from the ground; but before
he replaced it on his head, he turned, with a gesture which would have
made the fortune of any orator,--a gesture of mingled love and farewell,
and solemnly blessed the roof-tree which had sheltered him in his hour
of need. I could not help being struck by the extraordinarily good
language in which he expressed his fervent desires, and his whole
bearing seemed quite different to that of the silent, half-starved man
we had kept in the kitchen these last three days. I watched him turn and
go, noiselessly closing the garden gate after him, and--shall I confess
it?--my heart has always felt light whenever I think of that swagger's
blessing. When we all met at breakfast I had to take his part, and tell
of the scene I had witnessed; for everybody was inclined to blame him
for having stolen away, scarcely without saying good-bye, or expressing
a word of thanks for the kindness he had received. But I knew better.

From the sublime to the ridiculous we all know the step is but short,
especially in the human mind; and to my tender mood succeeds the
recollection of an absurd panic we once suffered from, about swaggers.
Exaggerated stories had reached us, brought by timid fat men on
horseback, with bulky pocket-books, who came to buy our wethers for the
Hokitika market, of "