once rather than
fix him in that owl-like way.

"Go on!" said Richard, huskily. "Yes? She's gone! Well?"

Tom was brought to understand he must make the most of trifles, and
recited how he had heard from a female domestic at Belthorpe of the name
of Davenport, formerly known to him, that the young lady never slept a
wink from the hour she knew she was going, but sat up in her bed till
morning crying most pitifully, though she never complained. Hereat the
tears unconsciously streamed down Richard's cheeks. Tom said he had
tried to see her, but Mr. Adrian kept him at work, ciphering at a
terrible sum--that and nothing else all day! saying, it was to please
his young master on his return. "Likewise something in Lat'n," added
Tom. "Nom'tive Mouser!--'nough to make ye mad, sir!" he exclaimed with
pathos. The wretch had been put to acquire a Latin declension.

Tom saw her on the morning she went away, he said: she was very
sorrowful-looking, and nodded kindly to him as she passed in the fly
along with young Tom Blaize. "She have got uncommon kind eyes, sir,"
said Tom, "and cryin' don't spoil them." For which his hand was
wrenched.

Tom had no more to tell, save that, in rounding the road, the young lady
had hung out her hand, and seemed to move it forward and back, as much
as to sap, Good-bye, Tom! "And though she couldn't see me," said Tom,
"I took off my hat. I did take it so kind of her to think of a chap like
me." He was at high-pressure sentiment--what with his education for a
hero and his master's love-stricken state.

"You saw no more of her, Tom?"

"No, sir. That was the last!"

"That was the last you saw of her, Tom?"

"Well, sir, I saw nothin' more."

"And so she went out of sight!"

"Clean gone, that she were, sir."

"Why did they take her away? what have they done with her? where have
they taken her to?"

These red-hot questionings were addressed to the universal heaven rather
than to Tom.

"Why didn't she write?" they were resumed. "Why did she leave? She's
mine. She belongs to me! Who dared take her away? Why did she leave
without writing?--Tom!"

"Yes, sir," said the well-drilled recruit, dressing himself up to the
word of command. He expected a variation of the theme from the change of
tone with which his name had been pronounced, but it was again, "Where
have they taken her to?" and this was even more perplexing to Tom than
his hard sum in arithmetic had been. He could only draw down the c