may be pleased to know. They are very anxious to see
Raynham."

"I love the old place," cried Richard. "I never wish to leave it."

"Why, boy, before I left you were constantly begging to see town."

"Was I, sir? How odd! Well! I don't want to remain here. I've seen enough
of it."

"How did you find your way to me?"

Richard laughed, and related his bewilderment at the miles of brick, and
the noise, and the troops of people, concluding, "There's no place like
home!"

The baronet watched his symptomatic brilliant eyes, and favoured him with
a double-dealing sentence--

"To anchor the heart by any object ere we have half traversed the world,
is youth's foolishness, my son. Reverence time! A better maxim that than
your Horatian."

"He knows all!" thought Richard, and instantly drew away leagues from his
father, and threw up fortifications round his love and himself.

Dinner over, Richard looked hurriedly at his watch, and said, with much
briskness, "I shall just be in time, sir, if we walk. Will you come with
me to the station?"

The baronet did not answer.

Richard was going to repeat the question, but found his father's eyes
fixed on him so meaningly that he wavered, and played with his empty
glass.

"I think we will have a little more claret," said the baronet.

Claret was brought, and they were left alone.

The baronet then drew within arm's-reach of his son, and began:

"I am not aware what you may have thought of me, Richard, during the
years we have lived together; and indeed I have never been in a hurry to
be known to you; and, if I had died before my work was done, I should not
have complained at losing half my reward, in hearing you thank me.
Perhaps, as it is, I never may. Everything, save selfishness, has its
recompense. I shall be content if you prosper."

He fetched a breath and continued: "You had in your infancy a great
loss." Father and son coloured simultaneously. "To make that good to you
I chose to isolate myself from the world, and devote myself entirely to
your welfare; and I think it is not vanity that tells me now that the son
I have reared is one of the most hopeful of God's creatures. But for that
very reason you are open to be tempted the most, and to sink the deepest.
It was the first of the angels who made the road to hell."

He paused again. Richard fingered at his watch.

"In our House, my son, there is peculiar blood. We go to wreck very
easily. It sounds like superst