The nonsense that was in the youth might have poured harmlessly out, and its urgency for ebullition was so great that he was repeatedly oblivious of his oath, and found himself seated under the lamp in the act of composition before pride could speak a word.  Possibly the pride even of Richard Feverel had been swamped if the act of composition were easy at such a time, and a single idea could stand clearly foremost; but myriads were demanding the first place; chaotic hosts, like ranks of stormy billows, pressed impetuously for expression, and despair of reducing them to form, quite as much as pride, to which it pleased him to refer his incapacity, threw down the powerless pen, and sent him panting to his outstretched length and another headlong career through the rosy-girdled land.

Toward morning the madness of the fever abated somewhat, and he went forth into the air.  A lamp was still burning in his father’s room, and Richard thought, as he looked up, that he saw the ever-vigilant head on the watch.  Instantly the lamp was extinguished, the window stood cold against the hues of dawn.

Strong pulling is an excellent medical remedy for certain classes of fever.  Richard took to it instinctively.  The clear fresh water, burnished with sunrise, sparkled against his arrowy prow; the soft deep shadows curled smiling away from his gliding keel.  Overhead solitary morning unfolded itself, from blossom to bud, from bud to flower; still, delicious changes of light and colour, to whose influences he was heedless as he shot under willows and aspens, and across sheets of river-reaches, pure mirrors to the upper glory, himself the sole tenant of the stream.  Somewhere at the founts of the world lay the land he was rowing toward; something of its shadowed lights might be discerned here and there.  It was not a dream, now he knew.  There was a secret abroad.  The woods were full of it; the waters rolled with it, and the winds.  Oh, why could not one in these days do some high knightly deed which should draw down ladies’ eyes from their heaven, as in the days of Arthur!  To such a meaning breathed the unconscious sighs of the youth, when he had pulled through his first feverish energy.

He was off Bursley, and had lapsed a little into that musing quietude which follows strenuous exercise, when be heard a hail and his own name called.  It was no lady, no fairy, but young Ralph Morton, an irruption of miserable masculine prose.  Heartily wishing him abed with the rest of mankind, Richard rowed in and jumped ashore.  Ralph immediately seized his arm, saying that he desired earnestly to have a talk with him, and dragged the Magnetic Youth from his water-dreams, up and down the wet mown grass.  That he had to say seemed to be difficult of utterance, and Richard, though he barely listened, soon had enough of his old rival’s gladness at seeing him, and exhibited signs of impatience; whereat Ralph, as one who branches into matter somewhat foreign to his mind, but of great human interest and importance, put the question to him: