For one moment the books around him seemed to Richard to rush upon his brain like troops to the assault of a citadel; but the next he said-- “I can ask you for nothing whatever, sir; but I thank you from my heart for my poor friends, your children. Believe me I am grateful.” With a lingering look at his father, he left the room. CHAPTER L. _DUCK-FISTS_. The godless old man was strangely moved. He rose, but instead of ringing the bell, hobbled after Richard to the door. As he opened it, however, he heard the hall-door close. He went to it, but by the time he reached it, the bookbinder had turned a corner of the house, to go by a back-way to the spot where his grandfather was waiting for him. He found him in his cart, immovably expectant, his pony eating the grass at the edge of the road. Before he got his head pulled up, Richard was in the cart beside him. “Drive on, grandfather,” he panted in triumph. “I've got it!” “Got what, lad?” returned the old man, with a flash in his eyes, and a forward strain of his neck. “What I wanted. Money. Twenty pounds.” “Bah! twenty pounds!” returned Simon with contempt, and a jerk of his head the other way. He had himself noted Richard's likeness to his daughter, and imagined it impossible sir Wilton should not also see it. “But of course,” he went on, “twenty pounds will be a large sum to them, and give them time to look about, and see what can be done. And now I'll tell you what, lad: if the young man is fit to be moved when you go back, you just bring him down here--to the cottage, I mean--and it shan't cost him a ha'penny. I've a bit of a nest-egg as ain't chalk nor yet china; and Jessie is going to be well married; and who knows but the place may suit him as it did his sister! You look to it when you get home.” “I will indeed, grandfather!--You're a good man, grandfather: the poor things are no blood of yours!” “Where's the odds o' that!” grunted Simon. “I reckon it was your God and mine as made 'em!” Richard felt in his soul that, little reason as he had to be proud of his descent, he had at least one noble grandfather. “You're a good man, grandfather!” he repeated meditatively. “Middlin',” returned the old man, laughing. “I'm not so good by a long chalk as my maker meant me, and I'm not so bad as the devil would have me. But if I were the powers that be, I wouldn't leave things as they are! I'd have 'em a bit straightened out afore I died!” “That shows where you come from, Mr. Wingfold would say; for that is just what God is always doing.”