“I see,” said Yorke, smiling in spite of himself.

“Of course you do; did you think I was trifling with your intelligence?  I tell you that it is quite on the cards that you may recover your lost position, and regain what is morally your own again.  Carew is delighted with you, not so much because you saved his stags as because you fought such a good battle with him by the Decoy Pond.  He has been consulting me professionally as to whether it would be contrary to the tables of affinity to have another set-to with you.  I am sorry my reply was in the negative, for, now I look at you, I do believe you would have thrashed him; but I was so afraid of his getting the better of you, which might have ruined your fortunes.”

Richard could only repeat his thanks for the good clergyman’s kindness.  “You know nobody here, I suppose,” observed the latter, “and, with a few exceptions, which I will name to you, that is not of much consequence.  It is a shifting lot:  they are here to-day and gone to-morrow, as says the Scripture, and I wish they were all going to-morrow except Byam Ryll.  That’s old Byam yonder, with the paunch and his hands behind him; he has nowhere else to put them, poor fellow.”  And here Parson Whymper launched into biography as aforesaid.

The clock on the chimney-piece, on which the two were leaning, broke in upon the divine’s scarcely less dulcet accents with its silver quarter.

“This is the first time,” said Whymper, “that I have ever known your father late; and to you belongs the honor of having caused him to transgress his own immutable rule.”

While he was yet speaking a hunting-horn was blown in the hall beneath, and the whole company turned en masse, like a field of poppies before a sudden wind, to the door where Carew was standing.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FEAST OF LAPITHAE

The host himself led the way down stairs; while the rear of the party was brought up by Mr. Whymper, to whom Yorke attached himself.

When they reached the dining-room, and before they took their seats at the ample table, the chaplain, with sonorous voice, gave a view holloa! which was the Crompton grace.

“It is very distressing to me to have to act in this way,” whispered he to his young friend, whose countenance betrayed considerable astonishment; but it is the custom of the house; and, after all, there is no great harm in it. De minimis non curat lex, you know.”

“That does not hold good with respect to the law of affiliation, parson,” observed Mr. Byam Ryll, who sat on the other side of him, “if, at least, I have not forgotten my Burns.”

“I always understood that Burns had very loose views upon such matters,” returned the chaplain, demurely.