and protected by law. At the first stroke of the
pick-axe it is ten to one but what you are taken up for a trespass. But
the path up the mountain is a right of way uncontested. You may be safe
at the summit, before (even if the owners are fools enough to let you)
you could have levelled a yard. '_Cospetto!_' quoth the doctor, 'it is
more than two thousand years ago since poor Plato began to level it, and
the mountain is as high as ever!'"

Thus saying, Riccabocca came to the end of his pipe, and, stalking
thoughtfully away, he left Leonard Fairfield trying to extract light
from the smoke.

CHAPTER IX.

Shortly after this discourse of Riccabocca's, an incident occurred to
Leonard that served to carry his mind into new directions. One evening,
when his mother was out, he was at work on a new mechanical contrivance,
and had the misfortune to break one of the instruments which he
employed. Now it will be remembered that his father had been the
Squire's head-carpenter; the widow had carefully hoarded the tools of
his craft which had belonged to her poor Mark; and though she
occasionally lent them to Leonard, she would not give them up to his
service. Amongst these, Leonard knew that he should find the one that he
wanted; and being much interested in his contrivance, he could not wait
till his mother's return. The tools, with other little relics of the
lost, were kept in a large trunk in Mrs. Fairfield's sleeping room; the
trunk was not locked, and Leonard went to it without ceremony or
scruple. In rummaging for the instrument, his eye fell on a bundle of
MSS.; and he suddenly recollected that when he was a mere child, and
before he much knew the difference between verse and prose, his mother
had pointed to these MSS. and said "One day or other, when you can read
nicely I'll let you look at these, Lenny. My poor Mark wrote such
verses--ah, he _was_ a scollard!" Leonard, reasonably enough, thought
that the time had now arrived when he was worthy the privilege of
reading the paternal effusions, and he took forth the MSS. with a keen
but melancholy interest. He recognized his father's handwriting, which
he had often seen before in account-books and memoranda, and read
eagerly some trifling poems, which did not show much genius, nor much
mastery of language and rhythm--such poems, in short, as a self-educated
man with a poetic taste and feeling, rather than poetic inspiration or
artistic culture, might compose with credit, b