Blair Collection > Rhys Lewis, minister of Bethel

RHYS LEWIS. 263
CHAPTEE XXX.
THE POACHER.
I THOr^GHT I knew my friend "Will Bryan thorouglily. I had
had every opportunity for so doing. He was so frank and
open-hearted, that I fancied there was no difficulty in reading
him. But from the conversation recorded in the preceding
chapter, I saw there were strata in his character, of the
existence of which I was not previously aware. I had always
considered him the picture of health and vivacity, and as one
whose talents shone although they had never been cultivated.
He was no great reader ; but of whatsoever he read he took in
the meaning and spirit at a gulp. He was too listless to
take pains, but then he did- everything, apparently, without
effort. All he saw and all he heard — sermons excepted— he
took down, as it were, in shorthand upon his memory. He
was a shrewd, keen observer of men and things. To use his
own idiom, he was constantly "spotting" something or some-
body, and it was but seldom he was far off the mark. On return-
ing home together from places we had visited he would aston-
ish me with the number of things he had "spotted," but which
I had never noticed at all. T am not much surprised, now, that
he used to call me, on such occasions, Bartimseus. I often
envied his ability to see things as they were, and not as they
seemed. I considered, always, that he had a natural faculty
for detecting deceit and trickery, or as he called them
"humbug" and "fudge." His shrewdness and his knack of
setting things forth in their true colours— in few, but cutting
words— had impressed me for years, and induced me to emulate
him. But, for all that, I felt, as he himself admitted, that he had
"done me harm; " for, many a time, when I fancied myself
benefitting from a sermon or address. Will would destroy the
good impression by pointing out some " humbug" in it of his
own discovering. Although I could place greater reliance
upon his honour, and presume farther upon his generosity
than anyone else, still, I was convinced that he was an utter
stranger to serious feeling, and wholly unconcerned about his
spiiitual condition. After I had resolved to reveal my intention