titled to do by his extensive
reading at a German university--"capital is a bugbear. The capital
that is really wanting is thought, mind, combination, knowledge."

"But, Lucius--"

"Yes, I know what you are going to say, mother. I don't boast that
I possess all these things; but I do say that I will endeavour to
obtain them."

"I have no doubt you will; but should not that come first?"

"That is waiting again. We all know as much as this, that good manure
will give good crops if the sun be allowed full play upon the land,
and nothing but the crop be allowed to grow. That is what I shall
attempt at first, and there can be no great danger in that." And so
he went to Liverpool.

Lady Mason during his absence began to regret that she had not left
him in the undisturbed and inexpensive possession of the Mongolidae
and the Iapetidae. His rent from the estate, including that which she
would have paid him as tenant of the smaller farm, would have enabled
him to live with all comfort; and, if such had been his taste, he
might have become a philosophical student, and lived respectably
without adding anything to his income by the sweat of his brow. But
now the matter was likely to become serious enough. For a gentleman
farmer determined to wait no longer for the chemists, whatever might
be the results, an immediate profitable return per acre could not be
expected as one of them. Any rent from that smaller farm would now
be out of the question, and it would be well if the payments made
so punctually by old Mr. Greenwood were not also swallowed up in
the search after unadulterated guano. Who could tell whether in
the pursuit of science he might not insist on chartering a vessel,
himself, for the Peruvian coast?

CHAPTER III

THE CLEEVE

I have said that Sir Peregrine Orme was not a rich man, meaning
thereby that he was not a rich man considering his acknowledged
position in the county. Such men not uncommonly have their tens,
twelves, and twenty thousands a year; but Sir Peregrine's estate
did not give him above three or four. He was lord of the manor of
Hamworth, and possessed seignorial rights, or rather the skeleton and
remembrance of such rights with reference to a very large district of
country; but his actual property--that from which he still received
the substantial benefits of ownership--was not so large as those
of some of his neighbours. There was, however, no place within the
county which was so beaut