‘Prefer to keep him!’ he echoed. ‘These people, who go tramping about the country a-pilfering and vagabondising on all hands, prefer to keep a bird, when a landed proprietor and a justice asks his price! That old woman’s been to school. I know she has. Don’t tell me no,’ he roared to the widow, ‘I say, yes.’

Barnaby’s mother pleaded guilty to the accusation, and hoped there was no harm in it.

‘No harm!’ said the gentleman. ‘No. No harm. No harm, ye old rebel, not a bit of harm. If my clerk was here, I’d set ye in the stocks, I would, or lay ye in jail for prowling up and down, on the look-out for petty larcenies, ye limb of a gipsy. Here, Simon, put these pilferers out, shove ’em into the road, out with ’em! Ye don’t want to sell the bird, ye that come here to beg, don’t ye? If they an’t out in double-quick, set the dogs upon ’em!’

They waited for no further dismissal, but fled precipitately, leaving the gentleman to storm away by himself (for the poor lady had already retreated), and making a great many vain attempts to silence Grip, who, excited by the noise, drew corks enough for a city feast as they hurried down the avenue, and appeared to congratulate himself beyond measure on having been the cause of the disturbance. When they had nearly reached the lodge, another servant, emerging from the shrubbery, feigned to be very active in ordering them off, but this man put a crown into the widow’s hand, and whispering that his lady sent it, thrust them gently from the gate.

This incident only suggested to the widow’s mind, when they halted at an alehouse some miles further on, and heard the justice’s character as given by his friends, that perhaps something more than capacity of stomach and tastes for the kennel and the stable, were required to form either a perfect country gentleman, a thoroughbred Englishman, or a genuine John Bull; and that possibly the terms were sometimes misappropriated, not to say disgraced. She little thought then, that a circumstance so slight would ever influence their future fortunes; but time and experience enlightened her in this respect.

‘Mother,’ said Barnaby, as they were sitting next day in a wagon which was to take them within ten miles of the capital, ‘we’re going to London first, you said. Shall we see that blind man there?’

She was about to answer ‘Heaven forbid!’ but checked herself, and told him No, she thought not; why did he ask?

‘He’s a wise man,’ said Barnaby, with a thoughtful countenance. ‘I wish that we may meet with him again. What was it that he said of crowds? That gold was to be found where people crowded, and not among the trees and in such quiet places? He spoke as if he loved it; London is a crowded place; I think we shall meet him there.’

‘But why do you desire to see him, love?’ she asked.

‘Because,’ said Barnaby, looking wistfully at her, ‘he talked to me about gold, which is a rare thing, and say what you will, a thing you would like to have, I know. And because he came and went away so strangely—just as white-headed old men come sometimes to my bed’s foot in the night, and say what I can’t remember when the bright day returns. He told me he’d come back. I wonder why he broke his word!’

‘But you never thought of being rich or gay, before, dear Barnaby. You have always been contented.’

He laughed and bade her say that again, then cried, ‘Ay ay—oh yes,’ and laughed once more. Then something passed that caught his fancy, and the topic wandered from his mind, and was succeeded by another just as fleeting.

But it was plain from what he had said, and from his returning to the point more than once that day, and on the next, that the blind man’s visit, and indeed his words, had taken strong possession of his mind. Whether the idea of wealth had occurred to him for the first time on looking at the golden clouds that