believe in. "Hark at this old blackbird!" he cried, in his turn, and
pretending to interpret his fits of song:

"Oh, what a pretty comedy!--Don't we wear the mask well, my
Fiesco?--Genoa will be our own to-morrow!--Only wait until the train has
started--jolly! jolly! jolly! We'll be winners yet!

"Not a bad verse--eh, Ricky? my Lucius Junius!"

"You do the blackbird well," said Richard, and looked at him in a manner
mildly affable.

Adrian shrugged. "You're a young man of wonderful powers," he
emphatically observed; meaning to say that Richard quite beat him; for
which opinion Richard gravely thanked him, and with this they rode into
Bellingham.

There was young Tom Blaize at the station, in his Sunday beaver and
gala waistcoat and neckcloth, coming the lord over Tom Bakewell, who had
preceded his master in charge of the baggage. He likewise was bound for
London. Richard, as he was dismounting, heard Adrian say to the baronet:
"The Beast, sir, appears to be going to fetch Beauty;" but he paid no
heed to the words. Whether young Tom heard them or not, Adrian's look
took the lord out of him, and he shrunk away into obscurity, where the
nearest approach to the fashions which the tailors of Bellingham could
supply to him, sat upon him more easily, and he was not stiffened by
the eyes of the superiors whom he sought to rival. The baronet, Lady
Blandish, and Adrian remained on horseback, and received Richard's
adieux across the palings. He shook hands with each of them in the same
kindly cold way, elicitating from Adrian a marked encomium on his style
of doing it. The train came up, and Richard stepped after his uncle into
one of the carriages.

Now surely there will come an age when the presentation of science at
war with Fortune and the Fates, will be deemed the true epic of modern
life; and the aspect of a scientific humanist who, by dint of incessant
watchfulness, has maintained a System against those active forties,
cannot be reckoned less than sublime, even though at the moment he but
sit upon his horse, on a fine March morning such as this, and smile
wistfully to behold the son of his heart, his System incarnate, wave a
serene adieu to tutelage, neither too eager nor morbidly unwilling to
try his luck alone for a term of two weeks. At present, I am aware, an
audience impatient for blood and glory scorns the stress I am putting on
incidents so minute, a picture so little imposing. An audience will come
to whom