corned the poor contempt. "How I would have spurned him!
He was a coward!"

"I believe he pleaded the feelings of his family in his excuse,
and tried every means to get the man off. I have read also in the
confessions of a celebrated philosopher, that in his youth he committed
some act of pilfering, and accused a young servant-girl of his own
theft, who was condemned and dismissed for it, pardoning her guilty
accuser."

"What a coward!" shouted Richard. "And he confessed it publicly?"

"You may read it yourself."

"He actually wrote it down, and printed it?"

"You have the book in your father's library. Would you have done so
much?"

Richard faltered. No! he admitted that he never could have told people.

"Then who is to call that man a coward?" said Austin. "He expiated
his cowardice as all who give way in moments of weakness, and are not
cowards, must do. The coward chooses to think 'God does not see.' I
shall escape.' He who is not a coward, and has succumbed, knows that
God has seen all, and it is not so hard a task for him to make his heart
bare to the world. Worse, I should fancy it, to know myself an impostor
when men praised me."

Young Richard's eyes were wandering on Austin's gravely cheerful face. A
keen intentness suddenly fixed them, and he dropped his head.

"So I think you're wrong, Ricky, in calling this poor Tom a coward
because he refuses to try your means of escape," Austin resumed. "A
coward hardly objects to drag in his accomplice. And, where the person
involved belongs to a great family, it seems to me that for a poor
plough-lad to volunteer not to do so speaks him anything but a coward."

Richard was dumb. Altogether to surrender his rope and file was a
fearful sacrifice, after all the time, trepidation, and study he
had spent on those two saving instruments. If he avowed Tom's manly
behaviour, Richard Feverel was in a totally new position. Whereas, by
keeping Tom a coward, Richard Feverel was the injured one, and to seem
injured is always a luxury; sometimes a necessity, whether among boys or
men.

In Austin the Magian conflict would not have lasted long. He had but
a blind notion of the fierceness with which it raged in young Richard.
Happily for the boy, Austin was not a preacher. A single instance, a
cant phrase, a fatherly manner, might have wrecked him, by arousing
ancient or latent opposition. The born preacher we feel instinctively
to be our foe. He may do some good to the wr