It had certainly been presumed, though never said, that this last visit to the old home was to be only for one day. The hired gig had been kept; and in his letter the son had asked whether he could be taken in for Thursday night. But now the proposition that he should go so soon seemed to imply a cold-blooded want of feeling on his part. 'I need not be in such a hurry, sir,' he said. 'Of course, it shall be as you please, but I do not know that you will do any good by staying. A last month may be pleasant enough, or even a last week, but a last day is purgatory. The melancholy of the occasion cannot be shaken off. It is only the prolonged wail of a last farewell.' All this was said in the old man's ordinary voice, but it seemed to betoken if not feeling itself, a recognition of feeling which the son had not expected. 'It is very sad,' said the son. 'Therefore, why prolong it? Stand not upon the order of your going but go at once,--seeing that it is necessary that you should go. Will you take any more wine? No? Then let us go into the other room. As they are making company of you and have lighted another fire, we will do as they would have us.' Then for the rest of the evening there was some talk about books, and the father, who was greatly given to reading, explained to his son what kind of literature would, as he thought, fit in best with the life of a gold-digger. After what had passed, Caldigate, of course, took his departure on the following morning. Good-bye said the old man, as the son grasped his hand, 'Good-bye.' He made no overture to come even as far as the hall in making this his final adieu. 'I trust I may return to see you in health.' 'It may be so. As to that we can say nothing. Good-bye.' Then, when the son had turned his back, the father recalled him, by a murmur rather than by a word,--but in that moment he had resolved to give way a little to the demands of nature. Good-bye my son,' he said, in a low voice, very solemnly; 'May God bless you and preserve you.' Then he turned back at once to his own closet. Chapter IV The Shands John Caldigate had promised to go direct from Folking to the house of his friend Richard Shand, or rather, to the house in which lived Richard Shand's father and family. The two young men had much to arrange together, and this had been thought to be expedient. When Caldigate, remembering how affairs were at his own home, had suggested that at so sad a moment he might be found to be in the way, Shand had assured him that there would be no sadness at all. 'We are not a sentimental race,' he had said. 'There are a dozen of us, and the sooner some of us disperse ourselves, the more room will there be in the nest for the others.'