“What!”

“Cut his stick, and walked his chalks; and is off to London.”

“Poor boy,” said the Doctor, much distressed.

“Don’t cry, daddy; you can’t bring him back again.  He’s been gone these four hours.  I went to his room, at Bolus’s, about a little business, and saw at once that he had packed up, and carried off all he could.  And, looking about, I found a letter directed to his father.  So to his father I took it; and really I was sorry for the poor people.  I left them all crying in chorus.”

“I must go to them at once;” and up rose the Doctor.

“He’s not worth the trouble you take for him—­the addle-headed, ill-tempered coxcomb,” said Mark.  “But it’s just like your soft-heartedness.  Tom, sit down, and finish the game with me.”

So vanished from Whitbury, with all his aspirations, poor John Briggs; and save an occasional letter to his parents, telling them that he was alive and well, no one heard anything of him for many a year.  The Doctor tried to find him out in London, again and again; but without success.  His letters had no address upon them, and no clue to his whereabouts could be found.

And Tom Thurnall went to Paris, and became the best pistol-shot and billiard-player in the Quartier Latin; and then went to St. Mumpsimus’s Hospital in London, and became the best boxer therein, and captain of the eight-oar, besides winning prizes and certificates without end, and becoming in due time the most popular house-surgeon in the hospital:  but nothing could keep him permanently at home.  Stay drudging in London he would not.  Settle down in a country practice he would not.  Cost his father a farthing he would not.  So he started forth into the wide world with nothing but his wits and his science, as anatomical professor to a new college in some South American republic.  Unfortunately, when he got there, he found that the annual revolution had just taken place, and that the party who had founded the college had been all shot the week before.  Whereat he whistled, and started off again, no man knew whither.

“Having got round half the world, daddy,” he wrote home, “it’s hard if I don’t get round the other half.  So don’t expect me till you see me; and take care of your dear old eyes.”

With which he vanished into infinite space, and was only heard of by occasional letters dated from the Rocky Mountains (where he did shoot a grizzly bear), the Spanish West Indies, Otahiti, Singapore, the Falkland Islands, and all manner of unexpected places; sending home valuable notes (sometimes accompanied by valuable specimens), zoological and botanical; and informing his father that he was doing very well; that work was plentiful, and that he always found two fresh jobs before he had finished one old one.

His eldest brother, John, died meanwhile.  His second brother, William, was in good general practice in Manchester.  His father’s connections supported him comfortably; and if the old Doctor ever longed for Tom to come home, he never hinted it to the wanderer, but bade him go on and prosper, and become (which he gave high promise of becoming) a distinguished man of science.  Nevertheless the old man’s heart sank at last, when month after month, and at last two full years, had passed without any letter from Tom.