“It might be best to separate myself from him altogether and go back.”  On this, Eustace cried out with horror and dismay, and Harold answered, “Never fear, old chap; I’m not going yet.  Not till I have seen you in good hands.”

“And you’ll accept the invitation,” said Eustace, taking up one of the coroneted notes that invited us each for two nights to the castle.

“Very well.”

“And you’ll come up to town, and have a proper suit.”

“As you please.”

Eustace went off to the library to find some crested paper and envelopes worthy to bear the acceptance, and Harold stood musing.  “A good agent and a good wife would set him on his feet to go alone,” he said.

“Meantime he cannot do without you.”

“Not in some ways.”

“And even this acquaintance is your achievement, not his.”

“Such as it is.”

I pointed out that though Lord Erymanth refused to assist Prometesky, his introduction might lead to those who might do so, while isolation was a sort of helplessness.  To this he agreed, saying, “I must free him before I go back.”

“And do you really want to go back?” said I, fearing he was growing restless.

His face worked, and he said, “When I feel like a stone round Eustace’s neck.”

“Why should you feel so?  You are a lever to lift him.”

“Am I?  The longer I live with you, the more true it seems to me that I had no business to come into a world with such people in it as you and Miss Tracy.”

Eustace came back, fidgeting to get a pen mended, an operation beyond him, but patiently performed by the stronger fingers.  We said no more, but I had had a glimpse which made me hope that the pilgrim was beginning to feel the burthen on his back.

Not that he had much time for thought.  He was out all day, looking after the potteries, where orders were coming in fast, and workmen increasing, and likewise toiling in the fields at Ogden’s farm, making measurements and experiments on the substrata and the waterfall, on which to base his plans for drainage according to the books Lord Erymanth had lent him.

After the second day he came home half-laughing.  Farmer Ogden had warned him off and refused to listen to any explanation, though he must have known whom he was expelling—­yes, like a very village Hampden, he had thrust the unwelcome surveyor out at his gate with such a trembling, testy, rheumatic arm, that Harold had felt obliged to obey it.

Eustace, angered at the treatment of his cousin, volunteered to come and “tell the ass, Ogden, to mind what he was about,” and Harold added, “If you would come, Lucy, you might help to make his wife understand.”

I came, as I was desired, where I had never been before, for we had always rested in the belief that the Alfy Valley was a nasty, damp, unhealthy place, with “something always about,” and had contented ourselves with sending broth to the cottages whenever we heard of any unusual amount of disease.  If we had ever been there!