the blackest and most miserable of
all youthful days.

The King's Commissioner thought it wise, for some good reason of his
own, to conceal from me, for the present, the name of the poor lady
supposed to be Lorna's mother; and knowing that I could easily now
discover it, without him, I let that question abide awhile. Indeed I was
half afraid to hear it, remembering that the nobler and the wealthier
she proved to be, the smaller was my chance of winning such a wife for
plain John Ridd. Not that she would give me up: that I never dreamed of.
But that others would interfere; or indeed I myself might find it only
honest to relinquish her. That last thought was a dreadful blow, and
took my breath away from me.

Jeremy Stickles was quite decided--and of course the discovery being
his, he had a right to be so--that not a word of all these things must
be imparted to Lorna herself, or even to my mother, or any one
whatever. 'Keep it tight as wax, my lad,' he cried, with a wink of
great expression; 'this belongs to me, mind; and the credit, ay, and the
premium, and the right of discount, are altogether mine. It would have
taken you fifty years to put two and two together so, as I did, like a
clap of thunder. Ah, God has given some men brains; and others have good
farms and money, and a certain skill in the lower beasts. Each must use
his special talent. You work your farm: I work my brains. In the end, my
lad, I shall beat you.'

'Then, Jeremy, what a fool you must be, if you cudgel your brains to
make money of this, to open the barn-door to me, and show me all your
threshing.'

'Not a whit, my son. Quite the opposite. Two men always thresh better
than one. And here I have you bound to use your flail, one two, with
mine, and yet in strictest honour bound not to bushel up, till I tell
you.'

'But,' said I, being much amused by a Londoner's brave, yet uncertain,
use of simplest rural metaphors, for he had wholly forgotten the
winnowing: 'surely if I bushel up, even when you tell me, I must take
half-measure.'

'So you shall, my boy,' he answered, 'if we can only cheat those
confounded knaves of Equity. You shall take the beauty, my son, and
the elegance, and the love, and all that--and, my boy, I will take the
money.'

This he said in a way so dry, and yet so richly unctuous, that being
gifted somehow by God, with a kind of sense of queerness, I fell back in
my chair, and laughed, though the underside of my laugh was tear