The Squire of Gablehurst had passed to his last account.

CHAPTER II.  OUT INTO THE WORLD.

“You had better let me go, mother.  I shall do no good here.”

Tom stood before his mother with a flush upon his handsome face—­a flush that was one partly of shame, partly of anger, with a dash of excitement and eagerness thrown in.

His mother was in tears.  She had been uttering words of reproach and sorrow; for after a period of wonderful steadiness immediately succeeding his father’s death, young Tom had broken out into his wild ways again, and her fond hopes of seeing him grow into her comfort and stay were dashed ruthlessly to the ground again.  The impression made upon him by the death of the Squire was growing dim now.  His old companions were tempting him back to their ranks, and he had neither strength of purpose nor the resolute desire to resist their overtures.

“You had better let me go.  You know my father said it.  I have never done any good here, and I never shall.  I want to see the world, and I see nothing here.  Gablehurst and Gablethorpe are too narrow for me.  I will go to foreign lands, and come back to you with a better record to show.  I think I could make a fine soldier, but in this miserable little place a man has no scope.”

“A man has scope to become a good landlord, a kind master, a God-fearing head of his household,” said the mother, with a sigh in her voice.

But Tom interrupted impatiently: 

“That is all very well when one is the master.  Perhaps when I come back I can be all that myself; but now I am a dummy—­a nobody, and they all make game of me for being a mock squire!  My father himself knew that no man of spirit would stand such a humiliating arrangement.  If he could not trust me to succeed him, he did well to arrange for me to go elsewhere.  He said you would tell me what provision he had made for me to do so.”

The moment had come that the mother had so long dreaded.  She had to face the separation from her son, and to send him forth into the world alone.  But the experiences of the past weeks had taught her that perhaps this was the best thing that could happen to young Tom.  In Gablethorpe he had no chance of getting away from evil associates.  In a different place he might find friends of a different stamp.

She rose and silently unlocked a great oaken press, clamped with iron, a place where the Squire kept all his valuable papers, and some of the heirlooms which had come down to him from his forefathers.  Tom looked on with curious eyes.  He had always experienced, from childhood upwards, a certain sense of awe when that press was unlocked and thrown open.  He now observed his mother’s actions with great curiosity.

“Come, Tom, and lift down that box, for it is heavy,” she said; and Tom came forward and carefully lifted down a small iron-bound chest, which, for its size, was in truth remarkably heavy.  This box was placed upon the table, whilst the mother locked up the safe once more.