of clodpole; yet toward whom he felt just then a loving-kindness beyond what he felt for any living creature.  He laughed at him, and wept over him.  He prized him, while he shrank from him.  It was a genial strife of the angel in him with constituents less divine; but the angel was uppermost and led the van—­extinguished loathing, humanized laughter, transfigured pride—­pride that would persistently contemplate the corduroys of gaping Tom, and cry to Richard, in the very tone of Adrian’s ironic voice, “Behold your benefactor!”

Austin sat by the boy, unaware of the sublimer tumult he had stirred.  Little of it was perceptible in Richard’s countenance.  The lines of his mouth were slightly drawn; his eyes hard set into the distance.  He remained thus many minutes.  Finally he jumped to his legs, saying, “I’ll go at once to old Blaize and tell him.”

Austin grasped his hand, and together they issued out of Daphne’s Bower, in the direction of Lobourne.

CHAPTER VIII

Farmer Blaize was not so astonished at the visit of Richard Feverel as that young gentleman expected him to be.  The farmer, seated in his easy-chair in the little low-roofed parlour of an old-fashioned farm-house, with a long clay pipe on the table at his elbow, and a veteran pointer at his feet, had already given audience to three distinguished members of the Feverel blood, who had come separately, according to their accustomed secretiveness, and with one object.  In the morning it was Sir Austin himself.  Shortly after his departure, arrived Austin Wentworth; close on his heels, Algernon, known about Lobourne as the Captain, popular wherever he was known.  Farmer Blaize reclined in considerable elation.  He had brought these great people to a pretty low pitch.  He had welcomed them hospitably, as a British yeoman should; but not budged a foot in his demands:  not to the baronet:  not to the Captain:  not to good young Mr. Wentworth.  For Farmer Blaize was a solid Englishman; and, on hearing from the baronet a frank confession of the hold he had on the family, he determined to tighten his hold, and only relax it in exchange for tangible advantages—­compensation to his pocket, his wounded person, and his still more wounded sentiments:  the total indemnity being, in round figures, three hundred pounds, and a spoken apology from the prime offender, young Mister Richard.  Even then there was a reservation.  Provided, the farmer said, nobody had been tampering with any of his witnesses.  In that ease Farmer Blaize declared the money might go, and he would transport Tom Bakewell, as he had sworn he would.  And it goes hard, too, with an accomplice, by law, added the farmer, knocking the ashes leisurely out of his pipe.  He had no wish to bring any disgrace anywhere; he respected the inmates of Raynham Abbey, as in duty bound; he should be sorry to see them in trouble.  Only no tampering with his witnesses.  He was a man for Law.  Rank was much:  money was much:  but Law was more.  In this country Law was above the sovereign.  To tamper with the Law was treason to the realm.