is father and in himself, the youth now lived. Conscience was
beginning to inhabit him, and he carried some of the freightage known
to men; though in so crude a form that it overweighed him, now on this
side, now on that.

The wise youth Adrian observed these further progressionary developments
in his pupil, soberly cynical. He was under Sir Austin's interdict not
to banter him, and eased his acrid humours inspired by the sight of
a felonious young rick-burner turning saint, by grave affectations of
sympathy and extreme accuracy in marking the not widely-distant dates of
his various changes. The Bread-and-water phase lasted a fortnight: the
Vegetarian (an imitation of his cousin Austin), little better than a
month: the religious, somewhat longer: the religious-propagandist (when
he was for converting the heathen of Lobourne and Burnley, and the
domestics of the Abbey, including Tom Bakewell), longer still, and
hard to bear;--he tried to convert Adrian! All the while Tom was being
exercised like a raw recruit. Richard had a drill-sergeant from the
nearest barracks down for him, to give him a proper pride in himself,
and marched him to and fro with immense satisfaction, and nearly broke
his heart trying to get the round-shouldered rustic to take in the
rudiments of letters: for the boy had unbounded hopes for Tom, as a hero
in grain.

Richard's pride also was cast aside. He affected to be, and really
thought he was, humble. Whereupon Adrian, as by accident, imparted to
him the fact that men were animals, and he an animal with the rest of
them.

"I an animal!" cries Richard in scorn, and for weeks he was as troubled
by this rudiment of self-knowledge as Tom by his letters. Sir Austin had
him instructed in the wonders of anatomy, to restore his self-respect.

Seed-Time passed thus smoothly, and adolescence came on, and his cousin
Clare felt what it was to be of an opposite sex to him. She too was
growing, but nobody cared how she grew. Outwardly even her mother seemed
absorbed in the sprouting of the green off-shoot of the Feverel tree,
and Clare was his handmaiden, little marked by him.

Lady Blandish honestly loved the boy. She would tell him: "If I had been
a girl, I would have had you for my husband." And he with the frankness
of his years would reply: "And how do you know I would have had you?"
causing her to laugh and call him a silly boy, for had he not heard her
say she would have had him? Terrible words, he kn