this isn’t such a dull world.  John Raikes! thou livest in times.  I feel warm in the sun of your prosperity, Harrington.  Now listen to me.  Propound thou no inquiries anywhere about the old fellow who gave the supper.  Humour his whim—­he won’t have it.  All Fallow field is paid to keep him secret; I know it for a fact.  I plied my rustic friends every night.  “Eat you yer victuals, and drink yer beer, and none o’ yer pryin’s and peerin’s among we!” That’s my rebuff from Farmer Broadmead.  And that old boy knows more than he will tell.  I saw his cunning old eye on-cock.  Be silent, Harrington.  Let discretion be the seal of thy luck.’

‘You can reckon on my silence,’ said Evan.  ’I believe in no such folly.  Men don’t do these things.’

‘Ha!’ went Mr. Raikes contemptuously.

Of the two he was the foolisher fellow; but quacks have cured incomprehensible maladies, and foolish fellows have an instinct for eccentric actions.

Telling Jack to finish the wine, Evan rose to go.

‘Did you order the horse to be fed?’

‘Did I order the feeding of the horse?’ said Jack, rising and yawning.  ‘No, I forgot him.  Who can think of horses now?’

‘Poor brute!’ muttered Evan, and went out to see to him.

The ostler had required no instructions to give the horse a feed of corn.  Evan mounted, and rode out of the yard to where Jack was standing, bare-headed, in his old posture against the pillar, of which the shade had rounded, and the evening sun shone full on him over a black cloud.  He now looked calmly gay.

’I ‘m laughing at the agricultural Broadmead!’ he said:  “‘None o’ yer pryin’s and peerin’s!” He thought my powers of amusing prodigious.  “Dang ’un, he do maak a chap laugh!” Well, Harrington, that sort of homage isn’t much, I admit.’

Raikes pursued:  ‘There’s something in a pastoral life, after all.’

‘Pastoral!’ muttered Evan.  ’I was speaking of you at Beckley, and hope when you’re there you won’t make me regret my introduction of you.  Keep your mind on old Cudford’s mutton-bone.’

‘I perfectly understood you,’ said Jack.  ’I ’m Presumed to be in luck.  Ingratitude is not my fault—­I’m afraid ambition is!’

’Console yourself with it or what you can get till we meet—­here or in London.  But the Dragon shall be the address for both of us,’ Evan said, and nodded, trotting off.

CHAPTER XVIII

IN WHICH EVAN CALLS HIMSELF GENTLEMAN

The young cavalier perused that letter again in memory.  Genuine, or a joke of the enemy, it spoke wakening facts to him.  He leapt from the spell Rose had encircled him with.  Strange that he should have rushed into his dream with eyes open!  But he was fully awake now.  He would speak his last farewell to her, and so end the earthly happiness he paid for in deep humiliation, and depart into that gray cold mist where his duty lay.  It is thus