‘Here and now, thou most faithful steward,’ said Bagott, reddening under that mild rebuke. ‘And as to that my first policy, I took the short way, as I thought it, using the means to my hand at once to gag and bind thee, lest thou shouldst prove refractory. Well, I say not but that suaver methods might have served, and meekness lessoned pride. Who makes a god of overbearing shall himself be overborne. Enough, I have horses without, and the occasion is pressing. For the boy’s baggage, it can follow.’ Then, indeed, was shock and lamentation; but, for all his urbanity, the visitor was inexorable. So Brion must go to make his last adieux of the house and people that for thirteen years had sheltered and loved him, while his uncle and foster-father were at discussion to close the account embracing all that ministering tenderness. It is idle to dwell on the sad, fond scene, the more so as the spirit of youth is elastic, and easily extended to new interests, so that, even at the worst, there was a measure of consolation to be foreseen in the prospect of unknown adventuring. But presently they all came out into the road; and there in the blown evening was a man standing, and three horses held by him in a group; at sight of whom some spark of ancient memory glowed in the boy, and the name Clerivault sprang out of nowhere into his mind. It was indeed that very cavalier who had made his sword hiss from its scabbard like a snake on the day preceding that of the beautiful lady’s appearance; and in an instant all that forgotten episode came back into Brion’s mind, so that his heart leaped to this comfort of one whom, in his great forlornness, he might cling to as a friend. Now the question rose of his knowledge to manage a horse; but he had learnt that lesson, and learnt it well, of friendly neighbours, and so was to be trusted. And in a moment he was astride, and, the others following, turned, even with some pride of place in him, to cry his last farewells. Whereafter they all rode away, the boy’s parting vision being of good Mrs Angell, her face puffed and blowzed with grief, the caul on her head awry, a napkin stuffed into her mouth, or taken out of it to wave, and the little Alse, all tearful, clinging to her skirts. And so into the night and the unknown went Brion Middleton. CHAPTER III. THE JOURNEY WEST