Then she selected a small key from a number in a bag at her girdle, and offered it to her son.

“There, Tom, the box and its contents are yours.  You will find within five hundred golden pieces—­guineas every one of them, bright and new from the mint.  Your father saved them up for you for many long years, in case it should ever become needful that you should leave home to see the world.  Always it was his hope that you would remain at home to be his comfort and stay; but if that could not be, then would he wish to send forth his only son in such a manner as beseemed his condition in life.”

Tom’s eyes sparkled.  A flush mounted to his cheek, and his hand shook a little as he put the key into the lock.

It was all true.  There lay, in neat rolls, more money than he had ever seen in all his life—­a fortune for a prince, as it seemed to him in his youthful inexperience.  The admonitions and counsel of his mother fell on deaf ears.  Tom’s busy brain was planning a thousand ways in which his wealth might be expended.  He would go forth.  He would see the world.  He would win fame and fortune.  He would never return to Gablehurst until he brought with him a name which should cause the ears of those who knew him to tingle by reason of the fame he had won!

“Nay, but boast not of the future, my son,” pleaded the mother, with a note of anxiety in her voice; “and be not over confident.  The times are perilous, and you are but an untried youth.  Boasting is not well.”

But Tom could not listen.  He laughingly repeated his boast, and was off to the stables forthwith, to pick for himself the best horses for his ride to London.  For, of course, he must first go there, to fit himself out for his journey beyond seas, and find out where the army of the Duke was at present to be found.

Vague rumours of the great victory had penetrated to the wilds of Essex; but where Blenheim was, and what the victory was all about, the rustics knew as little as “Old Kaspar” of the immortal ballad of later days.  The squires were little less vague in their ideas as to the scope and purpose of the war.  It was to abase the power of France—­so much they knew, and was unpopular with the Tories of Jacobite leanings, for the reason that the French king was sheltering the dethroned monarch of the Stuart line.  But then the great Duke who was winning all these victories was said to be a stanch Tory himself; so that it was all rather confusing, and Tom was just as ignorant and ill-informed on all these topics as the hinds who tilled his fields.  He had never cared to inform himself of what was passing in the world, and the newspapers had always seemed to him very dull reading.

Now, however, he wished he knew a little more; but he told himself that he should quickly pick up everything in London.  His heart beat at the thought of seeing that wonderful city; and although he carelessly promised his mother not to linger there long, he was by no means sure that he would not make a good stay, and learn the fashions of the gay world before he crossed the sea.