In a few hours the doctor from Rothland had arrived and speedily set the broken bones. He seemed much interested in the case and made a careful examination. "Do you think he has been a lunatic long?" I asked. The doctor shook his head. "On the contrary," he replied, "I should say his madness has come on quite recently--the effect of some severe shock probably. If he is treated properly there is no doubt that he will regain his reason." In a few days the lunatic was pronounced well enough in health to be moved; and as all inquiries and advertisements about him proved fruitless, he was consigned to the county asylum at Torchester. CHAPTER XXIII. MY GUARDIAN. On the third day after my adventure in the park Mr. Ravenor called to see me. He came in splashed from head to foot and had evidently ridden a long distance and fast. I offered him a chair and some refreshment, for he looked pale and tired, but he declined both, and walked slowly up and down the room, his hands grasping a long riding-whip behind his back. "I can only give you a minute or two now, Morton," he said, with some slight return of his former brusque _hauteur_; "I am expecting visitors from London to-night and must get back to receive them. But there is something I must say to you. You will be surprised to hear that your mother has left you a considerable property?" I was very much surprised. "Are you quite sure of this, Mr. Ravenor?" I ventured to ask. "My mother always spoke to me as though we were poor." "I do not make mistakes," he answered, pausing in his walk and looking down upon me from his great height with knitted brows and piercing eyes, "least of all in matters of such importance. How much the exact sum will amount to I cannot tell yet, but it is more than twenty thousand pounds, so you will be able to choose your own profession. What will it be, I wonder--the Bar, the Army, the Church, agriculture? Come, you are a boy of imagination and have never been in love. You must have had day-dreams of some sort. Whither have they led you?" "Not to any of the professions which you have mentioned," I answered promptly. "Then where? Tell me. I am curious to know." "My ideas have always been very vague," I said slowly. "I should like to live quite away from any town, to read a good deal, and to spend the rest of my time out of doors; and then, perhaps, after a time, I might try to think something out and put it into words." "In short, you would like to be an author," Mr. Ravenor broke in, with a slight smile.