“I can’t assist you,” said Percy.  “By the way, Mr. Blancove denies everything.  He thinks you mad.  He promises, now that you have adopted reasonable measures, to speak to his cousin, and help, as far as he can, to discover the address you are in search of.”

“That’s all?” cried Robert.

“That is all.”

“Then where am I a bit farther than when I began?”

“You are only at the head of another road, and a better one.”

“Oh, why do I ever give up trusting to my right hand—­” Robert muttered.

But the evening brought a note to him from Algernon Blancove.  It contained a dignified condemnation of Robert’s previous insane behaviour, and closed by giving Dahlia’s address in London.

“How on earth was this brought about?” Robert now questioned.

“It’s singular, is it not?” said Major blaring; “but if you want a dog to follow you, you don’t pull it by the collar; and if you want a potato from the earth, you plant the potato before you begin digging.  You are a soldier by instinct, my good Robert:  your first appeal is to force.  I, you see, am a civilian:  I invariably try the milder methods.  Do you start for London tonight?  I remain.  I wish to look at the neighbourhood.”

Robert postponed his journey to the morrow, partly in dread of his approaching interview with Dahlia, but chiefly to continue a little longer by the side of him whose gracious friendship gladdened his life.  They paid a second visit to Sutton Farm.  Robert doggedly refused to let a word be said to his father about his having taken to farming, and Jonathan listened to all Major Waring said of his son like a man deferential to the accomplishment of speaking, but too far off to hear more than a chance word.  He talked, in reply, quite cheerfully of the weather and the state of the ground; observed that the soil was a perpetual study, but he knew something of horses and dogs, and Yorkshiremen were like Jews in the trouble they took to over-reach in a bargain.  “Walloping men is poor work, if you come to compare it with walloping Nature,” he said, and explained that, according to his opinion, “to best a man at buying and selling was as wholesome an occupation as frowzlin’ along the gutters for parings and strays.”  He himself preferred to go to the heart of things:  “Nature makes you rich, if your object is to do the same for her.  Yorkshire fellows never think except of making theirselves rich by fattening on your blood, like sheep-ticks.”  In fine, Jonathan spoke sensibly, and abused Yorkshire, without hesitating to confess that a certain Yorkshireman, against whom he had matched his wits in a purchase of horseflesh, had given him a lively recollection of the encounter.

Percy asked him what he thought of his country.  “I’ll tell you,” said Jonathan; “Englishmen’s business is to go to war with the elements, and so long as we fight them, we’re in the right academy for learnin’ how the game goes.  Our vulnerability commences when we think we’ll sit down and eat the fruits, and if I don’t see signs o’ that, set me mole-tunnelling.  Self-indulgence is the ruin of our time.”