In due time Lewis stood before Skelton in the library, through whose diamond-paned windows the woods and fields glowed beautifully under the red December sun. Skelton began in his calm, reasonable voice: “Lewis, Mr. Bulstrode tells me that you spend most of your time with Yellow Jack and the stablemen, instead of at your books. How is this?” “Because, sir,” answered Lewis, “I am very fond of horses, and I’m not doing any harm down at the stables.” Skelton turned and faced the boy, whose tone was perfectly respectful, but it was that of one disposed to argue the point. As Lewis’s eyes met his, Skelton was struck by their beauty--they were so deeply, so beautifully black, and the very same idea came into Lewis’s mind--“What black, black eyes Mr. Skelton has!” Skelton’s memory went back twenty-five years. How wonderfully like was the little scamp’s coolness to his own in the bygone days, when old Tom Shapleigh would come over to rail and bluster at him! “At present,” continued Skelton, smiling a little, “horses and horse racing cannot take up a great deal of your time. It is your business to fit yourself for your manhood. You have every advantage for acquiring the education of a gentleman. Bulstrode, with all his faults, is the best-educated man I ever met; and, besides, it is my wish, my command, that you shall be studious.” “But, Mr. Skelton,” said Lewis, with strange composure, and as if asking a simple question, “while I know you are very generous to me, why do you command me? Mr. Bulstrode is my guardian.” The boy’s audacity and the shock of finding that his mind had begun to dwell on his status at Deerchase, completely staggered Skelton. Moreover, Lewis’s composure was so inflexible, his eyes so indomitable, that he all at once seemed to reach the mental stature of a man. Skelton was entirely at a loss how to answer him, and for a moment the two pairs of black eyes, so wonderfully alike, met in an earnest gaze. “I cannot explain that to you now,” answered Skelton after a little pause; “but I think you will see for yourself that at Deerchase I must be obeyed. Now, in regard to your continual presence at the stables, it must stop. I do not forbid you to go, altogether, but you must go much less than you have been doing, and you must pay more attention to your studies. You may go.” Lewis went out and Skelton returned to his books. But he was strangely shaken. That night he said to Bulstrode, after Lewis had gone to bed: “What promise there is in the boy! I don’t mean promise of genius--God forbid! he will write no Voices of the People at nineteen--but of great firmness of character and clearness of intellect.” “I don’t see why you are so down on genius,” said Bulstrode, not without latent malice. “You were always reckoned a genius yourself.”