This was how it came about that Sir William appeared at Birtwood station, leaning upon the arm of a young man who was not his son. After Paul’s visit he had another attack of faintness; and Fairfax, who came back in the evening to put himself at the disposal of the ladies, found them in great agitation, eager to get home again, yet half afraid to venture on the journey. He came back in the morning to help them to get their patient to the railway; and when they got there, Sir William, feeling the advantage of his arm, so held by him, that without either invitation or preparation, the young man, so strangely united to these strangers came with them, not a word being said on the subject. He had not even a ticket, nor the smallest provision for a visit. What of that? The young fellow was of that light heart and easy temper to which no adventure comes wrong. CHAPTER VIII. Paul Markham went back to his rooms, and sat down again amid the ruins. His heart was as heavy in his bosom as a lump of lead. It weighed upon him, hindered his breathing, refused to rise or to beat more lightly, let him do what he would. He had taken down his pictures, his china, all that he had thought luxurious, from his walls long before. Nothing remained of all his decorations which he had once loved but a copy of Albert Dürer’s _Melancholia_, which he had kept, thinking it symbolical. Besides, it was only a photograph. Had it been an original print, worth a great deal more than its weight in gold, he would not have thought himself at liberty to keep it. He looked round upon his books with gloomy eyes. Ruins--nothing but ruins--all around him! What was the good of them? They had done him all the service they were capable of, and in his life there was no further place for them. No schools now for him, no honours, no need of endless philosophical hair-splitting, this one’s theory of being, that one’s of knowing. He was going to put all that babble away. There were a few that he might take with him. Theocritus his _Idylls_; grey old Hesiod, that antique husbandman; Plato in his _Republic_. But even Plato, what was the good of him, with all his costly paraphernalia of a new society? Spears would do it all with much less trouble. No long education would be wanted for _his_ rulers--if, indeed, any rulers should be needed. Less trouble! After all, when he came to think of it, it was by no means sure that Spears’s process was less painful, less costly than Plato’s. Himself, for example. Would every pioneer who joined their ranks, every leader among them, be obliged to pay his footing as dearly as Paul had done? To turn his back upon his father and mother, to cast all his antecedents to the winds, everything, from filial affection to the books upon his shelves--it could not be said that this was a cheap or easy probation.