“I must say you are a pleasant fellow to travel with.”
“So I am generally reputed, and you’re a lucky dog to catch me ‘in the vein,’ for I don’t know when I was in better spirits than this morning.”
CHAPTER X. A DAYBREAK BESIDE THE RHINE.
THE day was just breaking over that wide flat beside the Rhine at Basle, as two men, descending from a carriage on the high road, took one of the narrow paths which lead through the fields, walking slowly, and talking to each other in the careless tone of easy converse.
“We are early, Barnard, I should say; fully half an hour before our time,” said Calvert, as he walked on first, for the path did not admit of two abreast. “What grand things these great plains are, traversed by a fine river, and spreading away to a far distant horizon. What a sense of freedom they inspire; how suggestive they are of liberty; don’t you feel that?”
“I think I see them coming,” said the other. “I saw a carriage descend the hill yonder. Is there nothing else you have to say—nothing that you think of, Harry?”
“Nothing. If it should be a question of a funeral, Bob, my funds will show how economically it must be done; but even if I had been richer, it is not an occasion I should like to make costly.”
“It was not of that I was thinking. It was of friends or relations.”
“My dear fellow, I have few relatives and no friends. No man’s executorship will ever entail less trouble than mine. I have nothing to leave, nor any to leave it to.”