The sound of it changed with the weather, as
does the sound of all falling waters and flowing waters. When I was
pupil of the watchmaker, I remembered it as sometimes saying to me for
whole days, 'Who are you, my little wretch? Who are you, my little
wretch?' I remembered it as saying, other times, when its sound was
hollow, and storm was coming up the Pass: 'Boom, boom, boom. Beat him,
beat him, beat him.' Like my mother enraged--if she was my mother."
"If she was?" said Vendale, gradually changing his attitude to a sitting
one. "If she was? Why do you say 'if'?"
"What do I know?" replied the other negligently, throwing up his hands
and letting them fall as they would. "What would you have? I am so
obscurely born, that how can I say? I was very young, and all the rest
of the family were men and women, and my so-called parents were old.
Anything is possible of a case like that."
"Did you ever doubt--"
"I told you once, I doubt the marriage of those two," he replied,
throwing up his hands again, as if he were throwing the unprofitable
subject away. "But here I am in Creation. _I_ come of no fine family.
What does it matter?"
"At least you are Swiss," said Vendale, after following him with his eyes
to and fro.
"How do I know?" he retorted abruptly, and stopping to look back over his
shoulder. "I say to you, at least you are English. How do you know?"
"By what I have been told from infancy.
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