The traveller, thus unexpectedly unveiled, could find no words for his astonishment.
"Are you of the honest party?" he stammered, more in awe than in anxiety.
"I am of no party. Ask the moor-men if the Spoonbills trouble their heads with Governments?"
The answer from the circle was a laugh.
"Who are you, then, that watches thus the comings and goings of travellers?"
"I am nothing—a will-o'-the-wisp at your service—a clod of vivified dust whom its progenitors christened Amos Midwinter. I have no possession but my name, and no calling but that of philosopher. Naked I came from the earth, and naked I will return to it."
He plucked with a finger at the fiddle-strings, and evoked an odd lilt. Then he crooned:
"Three naked men I saw,
One to hang and one to draw,
One to feed the corbie's maw."
The men by the fire shivered, and one spoke. "Let be, Mas'r Midwinter. Them words makes my innards cold."
"I will try others," and he sang: