ge was a success. Richard threw off his despair and gave
society some excellent books of which it took no notice. They lived in
Italy, and there Martin was born. When he was only eight his mother
died suddenly and his father came to London. He had been left
comfortably off by his wife, but after her death the old restlessness
returned: he gave up writing and gambled gracefully on the Stock
Exchange--that is to say, he bore his continual losses with an
exquisite nonchalance. Martin used to go to a day school and was
enabled by his brains and some sound teaching to win a good scholarship
at Elfrey. Then in August his father had succumbed to a long illness
and the boy was left to the guardianship of his uncle, John Berrisford,
to whom Richard Leigh had written the following letter:

DEAR JOHN, You are the only one of my relations by blood or marriage
with whom neither Joan nor I ever quarrelled. And so, just because you
left us alone, I can't leave you alone. I want you to be Martin's
guardian, in case this illness should do for me: you have seen
something of him and I know you like him. There is no home in the
world to which I would sooner entrust my son than yours. I have only a
thousand pounds and I want him to be decently educated. You have a
family and I should hate to think that I was burdening you. So you
must just go for the capital: he has a good scholarship at Elfrey and
ought to get one at Oxford. In that case the thousand pounds ought
just to see him through. It's plainly no use investing for fifty
pounds a year. Don't encourage him to be an artist: he can't afford
it. Besides it's a poor life to be a wanderer when you're old, and
that's what he would be without money. If he seems inclined for safety
and the Civil Service, let him take his chance. Anyhow I trust you
absolutely. Yours ever,

RICHARD LEIGH.

So Martin had spent the last three weeks of his summer holiday at The
Steading and thither he had now returned.

John Berrisford was a round, ruddy little man who was too English to be
like Napoleon and too Napoleonic to be like an English squire. In all
matters of theory, especially moral and political, he was fiercely
progressive, in all matters of taste a conservative. He combined
revolutionary fervour with a strong belief in old customs, old cheese,
and old wine. He ran a small estate on which he gave his labourers a
twenty-shilling minimum, decent cottages, and free beer on