r there yesterday?"

Ripton, glad to speak the truth, hurriedly assured Adrian that it was
not he had said so.

"Not? You had good sport, gentlemen, hadn't you?"

"Oh, yes!" mumbled the wretched victims, reddening as they remembered,
in Adrian's slightly drawled rusticity of tone, Farmer Blaize's first
address to them.

"I suppose you were among the Fire-worshippers last night, too?"
persisted Adrian. "In some countries, I hear, they manage their best
sport at night-time, and beat up for game with torches. It must be a
fine sight. After all, the country would be dull if we hadn't a rip here
and there to treat us to a little conflagration."

"A rip!" laughed Richard, to his friend's disgust and alarm at his
daring. "You don't mean this Rip, do you?"

"Mr. Thompson fire a rick? I should as soon suspect you, my dear
boy.--You are aware, young gentlemen, that it is rather a serious thing
eh? In this country, you know, the landlord has always been the pet
of the Laws. By the way," Adrian continued, as if diverging to
another topic, "you met two gentlemen of the road in your explorations
yesterday, Magians. Now, if I were a magistrate of the county, like Sir
Miles Papworth, my suspicions would light upon those gentlemen. A tinker
and a ploughman, I think you said, Mr. Thompson. Not? Well, say two
ploughmen."

"More likely two tinkers," said Richard.

"Oh! if you wish to exclude the ploughman--was he out of employ?"

Ripton, with Adrian's eyes inveterately fixed on him, stammered an
affirmative.

"The tinker, or the ploughman?"

"The ploughm--" Ingenuous Ripton looking about, as if to aid himself
whenever he was able to speak the truth, beheld Richard's face
blackening at him, and swallowed back half the word.

"The ploughman!" Adrian took him up cheerily. "Then we have here a
ploughman out of employ. Given a ploughman out of employ, and a rick
burnt. The burning of a rick is an act of vengeance, and a ploughman out
of employ is a vengeful animal. The rick and the ploughman are advancing
to a juxtaposition. Motive being established, we have only to prove
their proximity at a certain hour, and our ploughman voyages beyond
seas."

"Is it transportation for rick-burning?" inquired Ripton aghast.

Adrian spoke solemnly: "They shave your head. You are manacled. Your
diet is sour bread and cheese-parings. You work in strings of twenties
and thirties. ARSON is branded on your backs in an enormous A.
Theological wor