"Pshaw!" said Julian; "what excitable creatures you men are concerning matters that move us not a whit. I have forgotten what my father wrote about. Against whom would you trail a pike? With whom come to blows?" Anthony did not answer, for it was not easy to reply to these questions. He would fight for liberty and religion. But against whom? He dare not breathe even to himself the thought that it would be against his King. "And, pray, why come to blows?" "If you had read your father's letter with attention, you would know. For my part, I should hail war, if there were a chance of it, that I might have some occupation for my hands." "You have the hay," said Julian, ironically. "I want space to move, air to breathe. I am cramped. I--I do not know what I want," he said, and dashed his hat on the ground again, and threw himself into the seat by Julian. "How would Urith relish you taking the pike for any cause?" Anthony did not answer. He was looking sullenly, musingly before him. He had found out what troubled him--what took the brightness out of his life. The circle in which he moved, in which his energies were expended, was too cramped. To make hay! Was that a fitting work to occupy his mind and powers of body? His world--was that to be the little two-hundred-acre estate of Willsworthy? "You have not been married above two months, and you are already sighing with impatience to be away in a battle-field--anywhere but at home, poor Anthony!" Her face was turned from him that he might not see how her cheeks flamed. He said nothing. He did not even bid her a good-by; but he rose, resumed his hat, and walked away, with his head down, absorbed in his thoughts. CHAPTER XXVII. MATRIMONIAL PLANS. Squire Cleverdon did not often visit his sister. She was vastly proud when he did. What she would have liked would have been for him to drive up to her door in a coach and four, the driver cracking his whip on the box; but Squire Cleverdon did not keep a coach. Why should he? He had no womankind to consider in his household. Of the fair and inferior sex there was but Bessie, and Bessie never counted in old Anthony Cleverdon's calculations. Had his wife lived, he probably would have had his coach, like other gentlemen, not to please and accommodate her, but out of ostentation. But as his wife had departed to another world, and Bessie was too inconsiderable a person to be reckoned, he was glad to be able to spare his purse the cost of a coach, which he could hardly have purchased under a hundred pounds. As Magdalen Cleverdon could not see her brother drive up in a coach, she was forced to be satisfied to see him come as he would, on horseback, followed by two serving-men in his livery, and to be content that her neighbours should observe that the Cleverdons maintained so much state as to have men in livery to attend on the head of the house.