’Of the future, Harry. Listen, did not those same thoughts run thus? That it is dull work staying at home on the farm; that some of thy relations in past days had famous times in our civil wars, and went to battle and fought for the King, and that some even had been settlers in the old days of Queen Bess, and that, when all is said and done, it wants a great deal of self-denial to stay as thou art now doing, cheering the declining years of thy good father and mother. Some such thought I fancied I could read in your face, boy, when singing in the choir just now. Was it so? I would have you use candour with me.’ Harry turned his cap round and round slowly in his hands. Mr. Aylett was certainly a diviner of thoughts; but Harry was far too honest, and of too good principle, to deny the truth. It was his honesty, as well as his pluck and courage, that made him so dear to the clergyman, who had taught the boy a great deal more learning than usually fell to the lot of a yeoman’s son in those days, even though Mr. Fenn farmed his own land, was well-to-do, and could, had he so willed, have sent his son to Oxford; but he himself had been reared on Pitsea Farm, had married there, and there he had watched his little ones carried to the grave, all but Harry. Yes, Harry was his all, his mother’s darling, his father’s pride; the parson was welcome to teach him his duty to his Church, his King and his country, and what more he liked, but no one must part the yeoman from his only child. And Harry knew this, and yet often and often his soul was moved with that terribly strong desire for change and for a larger horizon, which, so long as the world lasts, will take possession of high-spirited boys. However, the lad was as good as he was brave; he knew that he must crush down his desire, or at least that he must not show it to his parents; but he did not try to resist the pleasure of indulging in thoughts of a larger life, thoughts which Mr. Aylett guessed very easily, but which would have made his father’s hair stand on end. This evening Mr. Aylett’s face looked so kind that Harry’s boyish reserve gave way, and with rising colour he exclaimed: ’Oh, sir, I can’t deny it; it is all true, that, and much more; just now I had such dreadful thoughts. I felt that I must go out yonder, away and away, and learn what the world is like; I felt that even father’s sorrow and mother’s tears would not grieve me much, and that I must break loose from here or die. I know it was wicked, and I will conquer the feeling, but it seems as if the devil himself tempts me to forget my duty; and worse,’ added poor Harry, who having begun his confession thought he would make a clean breast of it, ’I feel as if I must go straight to my father and tell him I will not spend my life in minding cattle and seeing after the labourers, and that after telling him, I would work my way out into the big world without asking him for a penny. Sir, would that be possible?’