THE DRY-FLY FISHERMAN
for the better part of a month. I made a fine tramp and a fair drover; and here I was ushered by a prim butler into this temple of gracious ease. And the best of it was that they did not even know my name.
I resolved not to puzzle my head, but to take the gifts the gods had provided. I shaved and bathed luxuriously, and got into the dress clothes and clean, crackling shirt, which fitted me not so badly. By the time I had finished the looking-glass showed a not unpersonable young man.
Sir Walter awaited me in a dusky dining-room, where a little round table was lit with silver candles. The sight of him—so respectable and established and secure, the embodiment of law and government and all the conventions—took me aback and made me feel an interloper. He couldn't know the truth about me, or he wouldn't treat me like this. I simply could not accept his hospitality on false pretenses.
"I am more obliged to you than I can say but I'm bound to make things clear," I said.
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