tite for the rewards that
are to follow duties done! Not banished from the help that is always
reached to us when we have fairly taken the right road: and that for him
is the road to Lymport. Let the kingdom of Gilt Gingerbread howl as it
will! We are no longer children, but men: men who have bitten hard at
experience, and know the value of a tooth: who have had our hearts
bruised, and cover them with armour: who live not to feed, but look to
food that we may live! What matters it that yonder high-spiced kingdom
should excommunicate such as we are? We have rubbed off the gilt, and
have assumed the command of our stomachs. We are men from this day!

Now, you would have thought Evan's companions, right and left of him,
were the wretches under sentence, to judge from appearances. In contrast
with his look of insolent pleasure, Andrew, the moment an eye was on him,
exhibited the cleverest impersonation of the dumps ever seen: while Mr.
Raikes was from head to foot nothing better than a moan made visible.
Nevertheless, they both agreed to rally Evan, and bid him be of good
cheer.

'Don't be down, Van; don't be down, my boy,' said Andrew, rubbing his
hands gloomily.

'I? do I look it?' Evan answered, laughing.

'Capital acting!' exclaimed Raikes. 'Try and keep it up.'

'Well, I hope you're acting too,' said Evan.

Raikes let his chest fall like a collapsing bellows.

At the end of five minutes, he remarked: 'I've been sitting on it the
whole morning! There's violent inflammation, I'm persuaded. Another hour,
and I jump slap from the summit of the coach!'

Evan turned to Andrew.

'Do you think he'll be let off?'

'Mr. Raikes? Can't say. You see, Van, it depends upon how Old Tom has
taken his bad luck. Ahem! Perhaps he'll be all the stricter; and as a man
of honour, Mr. Raikes, you see, can't very well--'

'By Jove! I wish I wasn't a man of honour!' Raikes interposed, heavily.

'You see, Van, Old Tom's circumstances'--Andrew ducked, to smother a sort
of laughter--'are now such that he'd be glad of the money to let him off,
no doubt; but Mr. Raikes has spent it, I can't lend it, and you haven't
got it, and there we all are. At the end of the year he's free, and
he--ha! ha! I'm not a bit the merrier for laughing, I can tell you.'

Catching another glimpse of Evan's serious face, Andrew fell into louder
laughter; checking it with doleful solemnity.

Up hill and down hill, and past little homesteads shining with yel