ng to be shunned for the sake of "wild-haired poets, dirty
firebrands, and such cattle."

The downright old baronet was even prepared, in an unformed sort of
way, to see his successor that was to be return to the paternal hearth
the richer for a few gentlemanly vices, provided he left his nonsense
behind him.

As the great lumbering vehicle, upon the box seat of which sat the
young traveller, lost in dreamy speculation according to his wont,
drew clattering to a halt, he failed at first to notice the central
figure in the midst of the usual expectant crowd of inn guests and inn
retainers, called forward by the triumphant trumpeting which heralds
the approach of the mail. There, however, stood the Squire of Pulwick,
"Sir Tummus" himself, in portly and jovial importance.

The father's eyes, bright and piercing under his bushy white brows,
had already detected his boy from a distance; and they twinkled as he
took note, with all the pride of an author in his work, of the
symmetry of limb and shoulders set forth by the youth's faultless
attire--and the dress of men in the old years of the century was
indeed calculated to display a figure to advantage--of the lightness
and grace of his frame as he dismounted from his perch; in short of
the increased manliness of his looks and bearing.

But a transient frown soon came to overshade Sir Thomas's ruddy
content as he descried the deep flush (an old weakness) which mantled
the young cheeks under the spur of unexpected recognition.

And when, later, the pair emerged from the inn after an hour's
conversation over a bottle of burnt sherry--conversation which, upon
the father's side, had borne, in truth, much the character of
cross-examination--to mount the phaeton with which a pair of
high-mettled bays were impatiently waiting the return homewards, there
was a very definite look of mutual dissatisfaction to be read upon
their countenances.

Whiling away the time in fitful constrained talk, parcelled out by
long silences, they drove again through the gorgeous, frost-speckled
scenery of rocky lands until the sheen of the great bay suddenly
peered between two distant scars, proclaiming the approach to the
Pulwick estate. The father then broke a long spell of muteness, and
thus to his son, in his ringing country tones, as if pursuing aloud
the tenor of his thoughts:

"Hark'ee, Master Adrian," said he, "that you are now a man of parts,
as they say, I can quite see. You seem to hav