If you chew it well, I don't
doubt you also will find it good.'--Is that something like what you
would have, Mr. Polwarth?"
"Precisely," answered the gate-keeper. "But," he added, after a
moment's delay, "I should be sorry if you stopped there."
"Stopped there!" echoed Wingfold. "The question is whether I can
begin there. You have no idea how ignorant I am--how little I have
read!"
"I have some idea of both, I fancy. I must have known considerably
less than you at your age, for I was never at a university."
"But perhaps even then you had more of the knowledge which, they
say, life only can give."
"I have it now at all events. But of that everyone has enough who
lives his life. Those who gain no experience are those who shirk the
king's highway, for fear of encountering the Duty seated by the
roadside."
"You ought to be a clergyman yourself, sir," said Wingfold, humbly.
"How is it that such as I----"
Here he checked himself, knowing something of how it was.
"I hope I ought to be just what I am, neither more nor less,"
replied Polwarth. "As to being a clergyman, Moses had a better idea
about such things, at least so far as concerns outsides, than you
seem to have, Mr.
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