"You never told me that," I said, sharply.
"No, lad."
"Do you spread abroad the sorry secrets of your kin, Mr. Cardigan?"
"He is not your kin!"
"He is more," said Mount, simply.
After a silence I asked him on what previous occasion the little Weasel had gone moon-mad.
"On many—every third or fourth year since I first knew him," said Mount, soberly. "But never before did he leave me to follow his poor mad phantoms—always the phantom of his wife, lad, in divers guises. He saw her in a silvery bush o' moonlight nights, and talked with her till my goose-flesh rose and crawled on me; he saw her mirrored in cold, deep pools at dawn, looking up at him from the golden-ribbed sands, and I have laid in the canoe to watch the trouts' quick shadows moving on the bottom, and he a-talking sweet to his dear wife as though she hid under the lily-pads like a blossom."
He glanced up at me pitifully as he walked beside my stirrup; I laid my hand on his leather-tufted shoulder.
"Sir, it is sad," he muttered; "a fair mind nobly wrecked. But grief cannot deform the soul, Mr. Cardigan."