de her heart too full.

"Eight years hence, when you come of age and I give account of my
stewardship, you will be very rich," she said.

Richard lay quite still, his eyes again fixed on the dimness.

"That--that's good news," he said at last, drawing a long breath. "I
saw things to-day, mother, while we were driving. It was nobody's
fault. There was a fair with a menagerie and shows at Farley Row. I
couldn't help seeing. Don't ask me about it, mother. I'd rather forget,
if I can. Only it made me understand that it is safer for any
one--well, any one like--me--don't you know, to be rich."

Richard sat up, flung his arms round her and kissed her with sudden
passion.

"Beautiful mother, honey-sweet mother," he cried, "you've told me just
everything I wanted to know. I won't be afraid any more." Then he
added, in a charming little tone of authority: "Now you mustn't stay
here any longer. You must be tired. You must go to bed and go to
sleep."

BOOK III

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH OUR HERO'S WORLD GROWS SENSIBLY WIDER

In the autumn of 1862 Richard Calmady went up to Oxford. Not through
ostentation, but in obedience to the exigencies of the case, his going
was in a somewhat princely sort, so that the venerable city, moved from
the completeness of her scholarly and historic calm, turned her eyes,
in a flutter of quite mundane excitement, upon the newcomer. Julius
March accompanied Richard. Time and thought had moved forward; but the
towers and spires of Oxford, her fair cloisters and enchanting gardens,
her green meadows and noble elms, her rivers, Isis and Cherwell,
remained as when Julius too had been among the young and ardent of her
sons. He was greatly touched by this return to the Holy City of his
early manhood. He renewed old friendships. He reviewed the past, taking
the measure calmly of what life had promised, what it had given of
good. A pleasant house had been secured in St. Giles' Street; and a
contingent of the Brockhurst household, headed by Winter, went with the
two gentlemen, while Chaplin and a couple of grooms preceded them, in
charge of a goodly number of horse-boxes.

For that first saddle, fashioned now some six years ago by Josiah
Appleyard of Farley Row, had worked something as near a miracle as ever
yet was worked by pigskin. It was a singularly ugly saddle, running up
into a peak front and back, furnished with a complicated system of
straps and buckles