PRELIMINARY CHAPTER.

URSUS.

Ursus and Homo were fast friends. Ursus was a man, Homo a wolf. Their

dispositions tallied. It was the man who had christened the wolf:

probably he had also chosen his own name. Having found Ursus fit for

himself, he had found Homo fit for the beast. Man and wolf turned

their partnership to account at fairs, at village fêtes, at the corners

of streets where passers-by throng, and out of the need which people

seem to feel everywhere to listen to idle gossip and to buy quack

medicine. The wolf, gentle and courteously subordinate, diverted the

crowd. It is a pleasant thing to behold the tameness of animals. Our

greatest delight is to see all the varieties of domestication parade

before us. This it is which collects so many folks on the road of royal

processions.

Ursus and Homo went about from cross-road to cross-road, from the High

Street of Aberystwith to the High Street of Jedburgh, from country-side

to country-side, from shire to shire, from town to town. One market

exhausted, they went on to another. Ursus lived in a small van upon

wheels, which Homo was civilized enough to draw by day and guard by

The Man Who Laughs