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The Moorman entrusted upon this mission was a plucky fellow, and he started off, taking a double gun and a few charges of powder and ball. The elephant-catchers were delighted with the idea, and we patiently awaited the result. About a quarter of an hour passed away, when we suddenly saw a puff of white smoke spring from the green rushes at the point of the sandbank.

In 1904, six years after Moorman's appointment to the lectureship, the Yorkshire College was reconstituted as a separate and independent university, the University of Leeds; and in the rearrangement which followed, an older man was invited to come in as official chief of the department for which Moorman had hitherto been solely responsible.

It was only natural that Moorman should make a pretty complete surrender to German ideals and German methods of study. It was equally natural that, in the light of subsequent experience, his enthusiasms in that line should suffer a considerable diminution.

At many spots a spectator may perceive in one survey the stone ruin of the Danmonian's habitation, and hypaethral temple or forum, the heather-clad debris left by Elizabethan streamers of alluvial tin, the inky peat-ridges from which a moorman has just cut his winter firing. But the first-named objects, with kindred fragments that have similarly endured, chiefly fire imagination.

To fulfil all these academical duties in the liberal spirit, which was the only spirit possible to Moorman, might well have been expected to exhaust the energies of any man.

We heard some exasperating stories of these transactions, which should put visitors on their guard. Almost every one who visits Ceylon, whether he lands in the north or the south, is a witness of, or a victim to, similar transactions. For instance, you have been shown a really fine sapphire by a Moorman, for which a sum is demanded which seems exorbitant.

Our coolies had not tasted food since the preceding evening; but, by good luck, we met a travelling Moorman, who had just arrived at the village with a little rice to exchange with the Veddahs for dried venison.

This invitation was not accepted until Moorman had generously made it clear that the proposed appointment would not be personally unwelcome to him. Nevertheless, it was clearly an invidious position for the new-comer: and a position which, but for the exceptional generosity and loyalty of the former chief of the department, would manifestly have been untenable.

I'm weary of all this bunkum 'bout auld stones an' circles an' the rest; I'm sick an' tired o' leavin' my work a hunderd times in summer months to shaw gaping fules from Lunnon an' Lard knaws wheer, them roundy-poundies 'pon my land. 'Tis all rot, as every moorman knaws; yet you an' such as you screams if us dares to put a finger to the stone nowadays. Ban't the granite ours under Venwell?

Keeping my Moorman with the light gun close to me in readiness, I began to load my two big rifles. In the mean time the bull was advancing step by step with an expression of determined malice, and my Cingalese servant, in an abject state of fright, was imploring me to run simply as an excuse for his own flight. 'Buffalo's coming, sar! Master, run plenty, quick! Buffalo's coming, sar!