There was a young gentleman close by, who thought with him.  The hope of Raynham had lent a careless half-compelled attention to the foregoing dialogue, wherein a common labourer and a travelling tinker had propounded and discussed one of the most ancient theories of transmundane dominion and influence on mundane affairs.  He now started to his feet, and came tearing through the briar hedge, calling out for one of them to direct them the nearest road to Bursley.  The tinker was kindling preparations for his tea, under the tawny umbrella.  A loaf was set forth, oh which Ripton’s eyes, stuck in the edge, fastened ravenously.  Speed-the-Plough volunteered information that Bursley was a good three mile from where they stood, and a good eight mile from Lobourne.

“I’ll give you half-a-crown for that loaf, my good fellow,” said Richard to the tinker.

“It’s a bargain;” quoth the tinker, “eh, missus?”

His cat replied by humping her back at the dog.

The half-crown was tossed down, and Ripton, who had just succeeded in freeing his limbs from the briar, prickly as a hedgehog, collared the loaf.

“Those young squires be sharp-set, and no mistake,” said the tinker to his companion.  “Come! we’ll to Bursley after ’em, and talk it out over a pot o’ beer.”  Speed-the-Plough was nothing loath, and in a short time they were following the two lads on the road to Bursley, while a horizontal blaze shot across the autumn and from the Western edge of the rain-cloud.

CHAPTER IV

Search for the missing boys had been made everywhere over Raynham, and Sir Austin was in grievous discontent.  None had seen them save Austin Wentworth and Mr. Morton.  The baronet sat construing their account of the flight of the lads when they were hailed, and resolved it into an act of rebellion on the part of his son.  At dinner he drank the young heir’s health in ominous silence.  Adrian Harley stood up in his place to propose the health.  His speech was a fine piece of rhetoric.  He warmed in it till, after the Ciceronic model, inanimate objects were personified, and Richard’s table-napkin and vacant chair were invoked to follow the steps of a peerless father, and uphold with his dignity the honour of the Feverels.  Austin Wentworth, whom a soldier’s death compelled to take his father’s place in support of the toast, was tame after such magniloquence.  But the reply, the thanks which young Richard should have delivered in person were not forthcoming.  Adrian’s oratory had given but a momentary life to napkin and chair.  The company of honoured friends, and aunts and uncles, remotest cousins, were glad to disperse and seek amusement in music and tea.  Sir Austin did his utmost to be hospitable cheerful, and requested them to dance.  If he had desired them to laugh he would have been obeyed, and in as hearty a manner.

“How triste!” said Mrs. Doria Forey to Lobourne’s curate, as that most enamoured automaton went through his paces beside her with professional stiffness.