All this came to an end.  John Salter’s father lived on the other side of the downs, and invited three of us to spend a day at his house.  The selection included Heriot, Saddlebank, and me.  Mr. Rippenger, not liking to refuse Mr. Salter, consented to our going, but pretended that I was too young.  Salter said his mother and sisters very much wished to make my acquaintance.  We went in his father’s carriage.  A jolly wind blew clouds and dust and leaves:  I could have fancied I was going to my own father.  The sensation of freedom had a magical effect on me, so that I was the wildest talker of them all.  Even in the middle of the family I led the conversation; and I did not leave Salter’s house without receiving an assurance from his elder sisters that they were in love with me.  We drove home—­back to prison, we called it—­full of good things, talking of Salter’s father’s cellar of wine and of my majority Burgundy, which I said, believing it was true, amounted to twelve hundred dozen; and an appointment was made for us to meet at Dipwell Farm, to assist in consuming it, in my honour and my father’s.  That matter settled, I felt myself rolling over and over at a great rate, and clasping a juniper tree.  The horses had trenched from the chalk road on to the downs.  I had been shot out.  Heriot and Salter had jumped out—­Heriot to look after me; but Saddlebank and the coachman were driving at a great rate over the dark slope.  Salter felt some anxiety concerning his father’s horses, so we left him to pursue them, and walked on laughing, Heriot praising me for my pluck.

‘I say good-bye to you to-night, Richie,’ said he.  ’We’re certain to meet again.  I shall go to a military school.  Mind you enter a cavalry regiment when you’re man enough.  Look in the Army List, you’ll find me there.  My aunt shall make a journey and call on you while you’re at Rippenger’s, so you shan’t be quite lonely.’

To my grief, I discovered that Heriot had resolved he would not return to school.

‘You’ll get thrashed,’ he said; ’ I can’t help it:  I hope you’ve grown tough by this time.  I can’t stay here.  I feel more like a dog than a man in that house now.  I’ll see you back safe.  No crying, young cornet!’

We had lost the sound of the carriage.  Heriot fell to musing.  He remarked that the accident took away from Mr. Salter the responsibility of delivering him at Surrey House, but that he, Heriot, was bound, for Mr. Salter’s sake, to conduct me to the doors; an unintelligible refinement of reasoning, to my wits.  We reached our town between two and three in the morning.  There was a ladder leaning against one of the houses in repair near the school.  ‘You are here, are you!’ said Heriot, speaking to the ladder:  ’you ’ll do me a service—­the last I shall want in the neighbourhood.’  He managed to poise the ladder on his shoulder, and moved forward.

‘Are we going in through the window?’ I asked, seeing him fix the ladder against the school-house wall.