t visit the Small House on that, his first day. It had been
thought better that he should first meet the squire and Bell at
Guestwick Manor, so he postponed his visit to Mrs Dale till the next
morning.

"Go when you like," said the earl. "There's the brown cob for you to
do what you like with him while you are here."

"I'll go and see my mother," said John; "but I won't take the cob
to-day. If you'll let me have him to-morrow, I'll ride to Allington."
So he walked off to Guestwick by himself.

He knew well every yard of the ground over which he went, remembering
every gate and stile and greensward from the time of his early
boyhood. And now as he went along through his old haunts, he could
not but look back and think of the thoughts which had filled his mind
in his earlier wanderings. As I have said before, in some of these
pages, no walks taken by the man are so crowded with thought as those
taken by the boy. He had been early taught to understand that the
world to him would be very hard; that he had nothing to look to but
his own exertions, and that those exertions would not, unfortunately,
be backed by any great cleverness of his own. I do not know that
anybody had told him that he was a fool; but he had come to
understand, partly through his own modesty, and partly, no doubt,
through the somewhat obtrusive diffidence of his mother, that he was
less sharp than other lads. It is probably true that he had come to
his sharpness later in life than is the case with many young men. He
had not grown on the sunny side of the wall. Before that situation
in the Income-tax Office had fallen in his way, very humble modes of
life had offered themselves,--or, rather, had not offered themselves
for his acceptance. He had endeavoured to become an usher at a
commercial seminary, not supposed to be in a very thriving condition;
but he had been, luckily, found deficient in his arithmetic. There
had been some chance of his going into the leather-warehouse of
Messrs Basil and Pigskin, but those gentlemen had required a premium,
and any payment of that kind had been quite out of his mother's
power. A country attorney, who had known the family for years, had
been humbly solicited, the widow almost kneeling before him with
tears, to take Johnny by the hand and make a clerk of him; but the
attorney had discovered that Master Johnny Eames was not supposed to
be sharp, and would have none of him. During those days, those gawky,
gainless, u