Whether it were Elizabeth wrangling with Mary Stuart, or Cromwell marshalling his Ironsides, or Buckingham falling under the assassin's dagger at 'Lias's feet, or Napoleon walking restlessly up and down the deck of the 'Bellerophon,' 'Lias rated them every one.

He was lord of a shadow world, wherein he walked with kings and queens, warriors and poets, putting them one and all superbly to rights.

Yet so subtle were the old man's wits, and so bright his fancy, even in derangement, that he preserved through it all a considerable measure of dramatic fitness.

He gave his puppets a certain freedom; he let them state their case; and threw almost as much ingenuity into the pleading of it as into the refuting of it.

Of late, since he had made friends with Davy Grieve, he had contracted a curious habit of weaving the boy into his visions.
'Davy, what's your opinion o' that ?' or, 'Davy, my lad, did yo iver hear sich clit-clat i' your life ?' or again, 'Davy, yo'll not be misled, surely, by sich a piece o' speshul-pleadin as that ?' So the appeals would run, and the boy, at first bewildered, and even irritated by them, as by something which threw hindrances in the way of the only dramatic entertainment the High Peak was likely to afford him, had learnt at last to join in them with relish.