Go, and I will wait for you here," said his father.

The wind that bowed the old elms, and shivered the dead leaves in the
air, had a voice and a meaning for the baronet during that half-hour's
lonely pacing up and down under the darkness, awaiting his boy's return.
The solemn gladness of his heart gave nature a tongue. Through the
desolation flying overhead--the wailing of the Mother of Plenty across
the bare-swept land--he caught intelligible signs of the beneficent
order of the universe, from a heart newly confirmed in its grasp of the
principle of human goodness, as manifested in the dear child who had
just left him; confirmed in its belief in the ultimate victory of good
within us, without which nature has neither music nor meaning, and is
rock, stone, tree, and nothing more.

In the dark, the dead leaves beating on his face, he had a word for his
note-book: "There is for the mind but one grasp of happiness: from that
uppermost pinnacle of wisdom, whence we see that this world is well
designed."

CHAPTER XI

Of all the chief actors in the Bakewell Comedy, Master Ripton Thompson
awaited the fearful morning which was to decide Tom's fate, in
dolefullest mood, and suffered the gravest mental terrors. Adrian, on
parting with him, had taken casual occasion to speak of the position of
the criminal in modern Europe, assuring him that International Treaty
now did what Universal Empire had aforetime done, and that among
Atlantic barbarians now, as among the Scythians of old, an offender
would find precarious refuge and an emissary haunting him.

In the paternal home, under the roofs of Law, and removed from the
influence of his conscienceless young chief, the staggering nature of
the act he had put his hand to, its awful felonious aspect, overwhelmed
Ripton. He saw it now for the first time. "Why, it's next to murder!"
he cried out to his amazed soul, and wandered about the house with a
prickly skin. Thoughts of America, and commencing life afresh as an
innocent gentleman, had crossed his disordered brain. He wrote to his
friend Richard, proposing to collect disposable funds, and embark, in
case of Tom's breaking his word, or of accidental discovery. He dared
not confide the secret to his family, as his leader had sternly enjoined
him to avoid any weakness of that kind; and, being by nature honest and
communicative, the restriction was painful, and melancholy fell upon the
boy. Mama Thompson attributed it to love