shelter and concealment, found him furtively whiffing tobacco.

"What news, Tom? Is there an illness?"

Tom sent his undress cap on one side to scratch at dilemma, an old
agricultural habit to which he was still a slave in moments of abstract
thought or sudden difficulty.

"No, I don't want the rake, Mr. Richard," he whinnied with a false grin,
as he beheld his master's eye vacantly following the action.

"Speak out!" he was commanded. "I haven't had a letter for a week!"

Richard learnt the news. He took it with surprising outward calm, only
getting a little closer to Cassandra's neck, and looking very hard at Tom
without seeing a speck of him, which had the effect on Tom of making him
sincerely wish his master would punch his head at once rather than fix
him in that owl-like way.

"Go on!" said Richard, huskily. "Yes? She's gone! Well?"

Tom was brought to understand he must make the most of trifles, and
recited how he had heard from a female domestic at Belthorpe of the name
of Davenport, formerly known to him, that the young lady never slept a
wink from the hour she knew she was going, but sat up in her bed till
morning crying most pitifully, though she never complained. Hereat the
tears unconsciously streamed down Richard's cheeks. Tom said he had tried
to see her, but Mr. Adrian kept him at work, ciphering at a terrible
sum--that and nothing else all day! saying, it was to please his young
master on his return. "Likewise something in Lat'n," added Tom. "Nom'tive
Mouser!--'nough to make ye mad, sir!" he exclaimed with pathos. The
wretch had been put to acquire a Latin declension.

Tom saw her on the morning she went away, he said: she was very
sorrowful-looking, and nodded kindly to him as she passed in the fly
along with young Tom Blaize. "She have got uncommon kind eyes, sir," said
Tom, "and cryin' don't spoil them." For which his hand was wrenched.

Tom had no more to tell, save that, in rounding the road, the young lady
had hung out her hand, and seemed to move it forward and back, as much as
to sap, Good-bye, Tom! "And though she couldn't see me," said Tom, "I
took off my hat. I did take it so kind of her to think of a chap like
me." He was at high-pressure sentiment--what with his education for a
hero and his master's love-stricken state.

"You saw no more of her, Tom?"

"No, sir. That was the last!"

"That was the last you saw of her, Tom?"

"Well, sir, I saw nothin' more."

"And so she went