an instant. But I am not the
person to cast a slur, since I am one of the poor of Farlingford myself,
and owe it to charity--to the charity of the rectory--that I can read
and write."

"But it came to you very naturally," observed Marvin, looking vaguely
across the marshes to the roofs of the village, "to suggest that those
who live in cottages are of a different race of beings--"

He broke off, following his own thoughts in silence, as men soon
learn to do who have had no companion by them capable of following
whithersoever they may lead.

"Did it?" asked Barebone, sharply. He turned to look at his old friend
and mentor with a sudden quick distress. "I hope not. I hope it did not
sound like that. For you have never taught me such thoughts, have you?
Quite the contrary. And I cannot have learned it from Clubbe."

He broke off with a laugh of relief, for he had perceived that Septimus
Marvin's thoughts were already elsewhere.

"Perhaps you are right," he added, turning to Miriam. "It may be that
one should go to a republic in order to learn--once for all--that all
men are not equal."

"You say it with so much conviction," was the retort, "that you must
have known it before."

"But I do not know it. I deny such knowledge. Where could I have learned
such a principle?"

He spread out his arms in emphatic denial. For he was quick in all his
gestures--quick to laugh or be grave--quick, with the rapidity of a
woman to catch a thought held back by silence or concealed in speech.

Marvin merely looked at him with a dreamy smile and lapsed again into
those speculations which filled his waking moments; for the business of
life never received his full attention. He contemplated the world from
afar off, and was like that blind man at Bethsaida who saw men as trees
walking, and rubbed his eyes and wondered. He turned at the sound of the
church clock and looked at his son, whose attitude towards Barebone was
that of an admiring younger brother.

"Sep," he said, "your extra half-hour has passed. You will have time
to-morrow and for many days to come to exchange views with Loo."

The boy was old before his time, as the children of elderly parents
always are.

"Very well," he said, with a grave nod. "But you must not tell Loo where
those young herons are after I am gone to bed."

He went slowly toward the house, looking back suspiciously from time to
time.

"Herons? no. Why should I? Where are they?" muttered Mr. Marvin