Scarce was he seated when the pen was dashed aside,
the paper sent flying with the exclamation, "Have I not sworn I would
never write again?" Sir Austin had shut that safety-valve. The nonsense
that was in the youth might have poured harmlessly out, and its urgency
for ebullition was so great that he was repeatedly oblivious of his oath,
and found himself seated under the lamp in the act of composition before
pride could speak a word. Possibly the pride even of Richard Feverel had
been swamped if the act of composition were easy at such a time, and a
single idea could stand clearly foremost; but myriads were demanding the
first place; chaotic hosts, like ranks of stormy billows, pressed
impetuously for expression, and despair of reducing them to form, quite
as much as pride, to which it pleased him to refer his incapacity, threw
down the powerless pen, and sent him panting to his outstretched length
and another headlong career through the rosy-girdled land.

Toward morning the madness of the fever abated somewhat, and he went
forth into the air. A lamp was still burning in his father's room, and
Richard thought, as he looked up, that he saw the ever-vigilant head on
the watch. Instantly the lamp was extinguished, the window stood cold
against the hues of dawn.

Strong pulling is an excellent medical remedy for certain classes of
fever. Richard took to it instinctively. The clear fresh water, burnished
with sunrise, sparkled against his arrowy prow; the soft deep shadows
curled smiling away from his gliding keel. Overhead solitary morning
unfolded itself, from blossom to bud, from bud to flower; still,
delicious changes of light and colour, to whose influences he was
heedless as he shot under willows and aspens, and across sheets of
river-reaches, pure mirrors to the upper glory, himself the sole tenant
of the stream. Somewhere at the founts of the world lay the land he was
rowing toward; something of its shadowed lights might be discerned here
and there. It was not a dream, now he knew. There was a secret abroad.
The woods were full of it; the waters rolled with it, and the winds. Oh,
why could not one in these days do some high knightly deed which should
draw down ladies' eyes from their heaven, as in the days of Arthur! To
such a meaning breathed the unconscious sighs of the youth, when he had
pulled through his first feverish energy.

He was off Bursley, and had lapsed a little into that musing quietude
which follo