“And you can’t mend it,” added Speed-the-Plough.  “It’s bad, and there it be.  But I’ll tell ye what, master.  Bad wants payin’ for.”  He nodded and winked mysteriously.  “Bad has its wages as well’s honest work, I’m thinkin’.  Varmer Bollop I don’t owe no grudge to:  Varmer Blaize I do.  And I shud like to stick a Lucifer in his rick some dry windy night.”  Speed-the-Plough screwed up an eye villainously.  “He wants hittin’ in the wind,—­jest where the pocket is, master, do Varmer Blaize, and he’ll cry out ‘O Lor’!’ Varmer Blaize will.  You won’t get the better o’ Varmer Blaize by no means, as I makes out, if ye doan’t hit into him jest there.”

The tinker sent a rapid succession of white clouds from his mouth, and said that would be taking the devil’s side of a bad case.  Speed-the-Plough observed energetically that, if Farmer Blaize was on the other, he should be on that side.

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,