fist, and take care you don't draw your fore-foot back more than
enough.'

'Please propose something to be done,' said Nevil, depressed by the
recommendation of that attitude.

Everard proposed a fight for every privilege his class possessed. 'They
say,' he said, 'a nobleman fighting the odds is a sight for the gods: and
I wouldn't yield an inch of ground. It's no use calling things by fine
names--the country's ruined by cowardice. Poursuivez! I cry. Haro! at
them! The biggest hart wins in the end. I haven't a doubt about that. And
I haven't a doubt we carry the tonnage.'

'There's the people,' sighed Nevil, entangled in his uncle's haziness.

'What people?'

'I suppose the people of Great Britain count, sir.'

'Of course they do; when the battle's done, the fight lost and won.'

'Do you expect the people to look on, sir?'

'The people always wait for the winner, boy Nevil.'

The young fellow exclaimed despondingly, 'If it were a race!'

'It's like a race, and we're confoundedly out of training,' said Everard.

There he rested. A mediaeval gentleman with the docile notions of the
twelfth century, complacently driving them to grass and wattling them in
the nineteenth, could be of no use to a boy trying to think, though he
could set the youngster galloping. Nevil wandered about the woods of
Steynham, disinclined to shoot and lend a hand to country sports. The
popping of the guns of his uncle and guests hung about his ears much like
their speech, which was unobjectionable in itself, but not sufficient; a
little hard, he thought, a little idle. He wanted something, and wanted
them to give their time and energy to something, that was not to be had
in a market. The nobles, he felt sure, might resume their natural
alliance with the people, and lead them, as they did of old, to the
battle-field. How might they? A comely Sussex lass could not well tell
him how. Sarcastic reports of the troublesome questioner represented him
applying to a nymph of the country for enlightenment. He thrilled
surprisingly under the charm of feminine beauty. 'The fellow's sound at
bottom,' his uncle said, hearing of his having really been seen walking
in the complete form proper to his budding age, that is, in two halves.
Nevil showed that he had gained an acquaintance with the struggles of the
neighbouring agricultural poor to live and rear their children. His
uncle's table roared at his enumeration of the sickly little beings,
consumpti