Heath-roots and pines breathed sharp in the cool autumn evening about the Bellingham station.  Richard stood a moment as he stepped from the train, and drew the country air into his lungs with large heaves of the chest.  Leaving his father to the felicitations of the station-master, he went into the Lobourne road to look for his faithful Tom, who had received private orders through Berry to be in attendance with his young master’s mare, Cassandra, and was lurking in a plantation of firs unenclosed on the borders of the road, where Richard, knowing his retainer’s zest for conspiracy too well to seek him anywhere but in the part most favoured with shelter and concealment, found him furtively whiffing tobacco.

“What news, Tom?  Is there an illness?”

Tom sent his undress cap on one side to scratch at dilemma, an old agricultural habit to which he was still a slave in moments of abstract thought or sudden difficulty.

“No, I don’t want the rake, Mr. Richard,” he whinnied with a false grin, as he beheld his master’s eye vacantly following the action.

“Speak out!” he was commanded.  “I haven’t had a letter for a week!”

Richard learnt the news.  He took it with surprising outward calm, only getting a little closer to Cassandra’s neck, and looking very hard at Tom without seeing a speck of him, which had the effect on Tom of making him sincerely wish his master would punch his head at once rather than fix him in that owl-like way.

“Go on!” said Richard, huskily.  “Yes?  She’s gone!  Well?”

Tom was brought to understand he must make the most of trifles, and recited how he had heard from a female domestic at Belthorpe of the name of Davenport, formerly known to him, that the young lady never slept a wink from the hour she knew she was going, but sat up in her bed till morning crying most pitifully, though she never complained.  Hereat the tears unconsciously streamed down Richard’s cheeks.  Tom said he had tried to see her, but Mr. Adrian kept him at work, ciphering at a terrible sum—­that and nothing else all day! saying, it was to please his young master on his return.  “Likewise something in Lat’n,” added Tom.  “Nom’tive Mouser!—­’nough to make ye mad, sir!” he exclaimed with pathos.  The wretch had been put to acquire a Latin declension.

Tom saw her on the morning she went away, he said:  she was very sorrowful-looking, and nodded kindly to him as she passed in the fly along with young Tom Blaize.  “She have got uncommon kind eyes, sir,” said Tom, “and cryin’ don’t spoil them.”  For which his hand was wrenched.

Tom had no more to tell, save that, in rounding the road, the young lady had hung out her hand, and seemed to move it forward and back, as much as to sap, Good-bye, Tom!  “And though she couldn’t see me,” said Tom, “I took off my hat.  I did take it so kind of her to think of a chap like me.”  He was at high-pressure sentiment—­what with his education for a hero and his master’s love-stricken state.