“What a coward!” shouted Richard.  “And he confessed it publicly?”

“You may read it yourself.”

“He actually wrote it down, and printed it?”

“You have the book in your father’s library.  Would you have done so much?”

Richard faltered.  No! he admitted that he never could have told people.

“Then who is to call that man a coward?” said Austin.  “He expiated his cowardice as all who give way in moments of weakness, and are not cowards, must do.  The coward chooses to think ‘God does not see.’  I shall escape.’  He who is not a coward, and has succumbed, knows that God has seen all, and it is not so hard a task for him to make his heart bare to the world.  Worse, I should fancy it, to know myself an impostor when men praised me.”

Young Richard’s eyes were wandering on Austin’s gravely cheerful face.  A keen intentness suddenly fixed them, and he dropped his head.

“So I think you’re wrong, Ricky, in calling this poor Tom a coward because he refuses to try your means of escape,” Austin resumed.  “A coward hardly objects to drag in his accomplice.  And, where the person involved belongs to a great family, it seems to me that for a poor plough-lad to volunteer not to do so speaks him anything but a coward.”

Richard was dumb.  Altogether to surrender his rope and file was a fearful sacrifice, after all the time, trepidation, and study he had spent on those two saving instruments.  If he avowed Tom’s manly behaviour, Richard Feverel was in a totally new position.  Whereas, by keeping Tom a coward, Richard Feverel was the injured one, and to seem injured is always a luxury; sometimes a necessity, whether among boys or men.

In Austin the Magian conflict would not have lasted long.  He had but a blind notion of the fierceness with which it raged in young Richard.  Happily for the boy, Austin was not a preacher.  A single instance, a cant phrase, a fatherly manner, might have wrecked him, by arousing ancient or latent opposition.  The born preacher we feel instinctively to be our foe.  He may do some good to the wretches that have been struck down and lie gasping on the battlefield:  he rouses antagonism in the strong.  Richard’s nature, left to itself, wanted little more than an indication of the proper track, and when he said, “Tell me what I can do, Austin?” he had fought the best half of the battle.  His voice was subdued.  Austin put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“You must go down to Farmer Blaize.”

“Well!” said Richard, sullenly divining the deed of penance.

“You’ll know what to say to him when you’re there.”

The boy bit his lip and frowned.  “Ask a favour of that big brute, Austin?  I can’t!”

“Just tell him the whole case, and that you don’t intend to stand by and let the poor fellow suffer without a friend to help him out of his scrape.”

“But, Austin,” the boy pleaded, “I shall have to ask him to help off Tom Bakewell!  How can I ask him, when I hate him?”