Meanwhile it became known in Market Drayton that Clive had returned to England. Rumour credited him with fabulous wealth. It was said that he drove through London in a gold coach, and outshone the King himself in the splendour of his attire. No report was too highly coloured to find easy credence among the simple country folk. Clive was indeed rich: he had a taste for ornate dress, and though neither so wealthy nor so gaily apparelled as rumour said, he was for a season the lion of London society. The directors of the East India Company toasted him as "General" Clive, and presented him with a jewelled sword as a token of their sense of his services on the Coromandel coast. No one suspected at the time that his work was of more than local importance and would have more far-reaching consequences than the success of a trading company. Clive had, in fact, without knowing it, laid the foundations of a vast empire. At intervals during two years scraps of news about Clive filtered through to his birthplace. His father had left the neighbourhood, and Styche Hall was now in the hands of a stranger, so that Desmond hardly dared to hope that he would have an opportunity of seeing his idol. But, information having reached the court of directors that all was not going well in India, their eyes turned at once to Clive as the man to set things right. They requested him to return to India as Governor of Fort St. David, and, since a good deal of the trouble was caused by quarrels as to precedence between the King’s and the Company’s officers, they strengthened his hands by obtaining for him a lieutenant-colonel’s commission from King George. Clive was nothing loth to take up his work again. He had been somewhat extravagant since his arrival in England; great holes had been made in the fortune he had brought back; and he was still a young man, full of energy and ambition. What was Desmond’s ecstasy, then, to learn that his hero, on the eve of his departure, had accepted an invitation to the town of his birth, there to be entertained by the court leet. From the bailiff and the steward of the manor down to the javelin men and the ale-taster, official Market Drayton was all agog to do him honour. Desmond looked forward eagerly to this red-letter day. His brother, as a yeoman of standing, was invited to the banquet, and it seemed to Desmond that Richard took a delight in taunting him, throwing cold water on his young enthusiasm, ironically commenting on the mistake some one had made in not including him among the guests. His crowning stroke of cruelty was to forbid the boy to leave the house on the great evening, so that he might not even obtain a glimpse of Clive. But this was too much: Desmond for the first time deliberately defied his guardian, and though he suffered the inevitable penalty, he had seen and heard his hero, and was content. CHAPTER THE THIRD