ABSTRACT

After breakfast, as usual, I and Charles went into the fields to work, a thing which our circumstances would not permit me to neglect. Whether amusing myself, or labouring, my thoughts constantly ran on the stranger’s secrets, of which he had told me enough to let me understand that enormous wealth was one of the consequences of possessing them. Whilst digging, and turning this over in my mind, it suddenly occurred to me, and I wondered (as folks often do) I was so stupid as not to think of it before, that the man who talked of / conferring all these riches and blessings on me, was himself, apparently, a poor, miserable, unhappy beggar. This did not at all square with my logical tenets –

Aλλωγ ιατρος αυτος ‘ελχεσι βρυων*