eed not go for to look so spiteful, master; you are not the great
man you thought you were; you are nobody now, and so you will find ere
long. So, march out, if you please: I wants to lock up the glass."

As he spoke, he took the lad roughly by the arm; but Philip, the most
irascible of mortals, was strong for his years, and fearless as a young
lion. He caught up a watering-pot, which the gardener had deposited
while he expostulated with his late tyrant and struck the man across the
face with it so violently and so suddenly, that he fell back over the
beds, and the glass crackled and shivered under him. Philip did not wait
for the foe to recover his equilibrium; but, taking up his grapes, and
possessing himself quietly of the disputed nectarine, quitted the spot;
and the gardener did not think it prudent to pursue him. To boys, under
ordinary circumstances--boys who have buffeted their way through a
scolding nursery, a wrangling family, or a public school--there would
have been nothing in this squabble to dwell on the memory or vibrate on
the nerves, after the first burst of passion: but to Philip Beaufort it
was an era in life; it was the first insult he had ever received; it was
his initiation into that changed, rough, and terrible career, to which
the spoiled darling of vanity and love was henceforth condemned. His
pride and his self-esteem had incurred a fearful shock. He entered the
house, and a sickness came over him; his limbs trembled; he sat down in
the hall, and, placing the fruit beside him, covered his face with his
hands and wept. Those were not the tears of a boy, drawn from a shallow
source; they were the burning, agonising, reluctant tears, that men
shed, wrung from the heart as if it were its blood. He had never been
sent to school, lest he should meet with mortification. He had had
various tutors, trained to show, rather than to exact, respect; one
succeeding another, at his own whim and caprice. His natural quickness,
and a very strong, hard, inquisitive turn of mind, had enabled
him, however, to pick up more knowledge, though of a desultory and
miscellaneous nature, than boys of his age generally possess; and his
roving, independent, out-of-door existence had served to ripen his
understanding. He had certainly, in spite of every precaution, arrived
at some, though not very distinct, notion of his peculiar position; but
none of its inconveniences had visited him till that day. He began
now to turn his