fair play, and treated as a man by other men, and be able to keep your
own money when you earned it, or at least to buy your own victuals with
it--what would you try to do, or what part of the country would you
think best to go to?"

"Dan, you must belong to a very clever family. It is useless to
shake your head--you must; or you never could put such questions, so
impossible to answer. In all this blessed island, there is no spot yet
discovered, where such absurd visions can be realized. Nay, nay, my
romantic friend; be content with more than the average blessings of
this land. You are not starved, you are not imprisoned, you are not even
beaten; and if you are not allowed to think, what harm of that? If you
thought all day, you would never dare to act upon your thoughts, and
so you are better without them. Tush! an Englishman was never born for
freedom. Good-night."

"But, sir, Squire Carne," cried Dan, pursuing him, "there is one
thing which you do not seem to know. I am driven away from this place
to-night; and it would have been so kind of you to advise me where to go
to."

"Driven away!" exclaimed Carne, with amazement. "The pride of the
village driven out of it! You may be driving yourself away, Tugwell,
through some scrape, or love affair; but when that blows over you will
soon come back. What would Springhaven do without you? And your dear
good father would never let you go."

"I am not the pride, but the shame, of the village." Dan forgot all his
home-pride at last. "And my dear good father is the man who has done it.
He has leathered me worse than the gentleman you spoke of, and without
half so much to be said against him. For nothing but going to the Club
to-night, where I am sure we drank King George's health, my father has
lashed me so, that I am ashamed to tell it. And I am sure that I never
meant to tell it, until your kindness, in a way of speaking, almost
drove it out of me."

"Daniel Tugwell," Carne answered, with solemnity, "this is beyond
belief, even in England. You must have fallen asleep, Dan, in the middle
of large thoughts, and dreamed this great impossibility."

"My back knows whether it has been a dream, sir. I never heard of dreams
as left one-and-twenty lines behind them. But whether it be one, or
whether it be twenty, makes no odds of value. The disgrace it is that
drives me out."

"Is there no way of healing this sad breach?" Carne asked, in a tone of
deep compassion; "if your fa