‘Why, if this Fulk was twenty years a tenant?’ ‘Was he? Well, we’ll not quarrel to a hair. But ’tis long as thou sayest--since he was a boy, in truth.’ ‘A boy!’ Brion actually laughed. It seemed so impossible that that tremendous being could ever have been a boy--like himself. ‘The Bagotts,’ went on Clerivault, ‘were big people here in the past, portreeves, and lords of the Stannary Court in Ashburton. They owned mines, and prospered. But, on one cause or another, they were for ever at litigation, and in the end that cracked them. The law was in their blood, i’faith, and imposthumated, as it were, in thine Uncle--came to a great head, and burst, imperilling his life. It was time for him to withdraw from it.’ ‘Was his life imperilled?’ ‘Say his reason, at least.’ ‘Had he never brothers or sisters, Clerivault?’ The man glanced quickly at the boy before answering. ‘One sister,’ said he, in a restrained voice; ‘but she died. Art his sole kin in all the world, young master. Be thankful for it. Love him and he’ll repay thy love. To those he trusts he’s ever gentle and considerate, fierce and proud though he profess in the world’s eye. Do we not know him--Phineas a master cook, and the boy William, and honest Nol and myself? Else should we, brilliant children of our parts, have been content to follow him into this exile, to sink our gifts in solitude, to serve him in sour misfortune as in prosperity? He has the trick of attachment, like some men with animals.’ ‘What misfortune?’ asked the boy wonderingly. Clerivault bit his lip. ‘Did I not tell thee?’ said he. ‘The law, taken in excess, like wine affects the reason, and he was too full of it for health--it impaired his judgments. Wherefore his decision to resign, and to seek amid these scenes of peace the restoration of his faculties. Misfortune enough--ha! to be reduced, in plenitude of one’s power, to a sick nonentity.’ Brion, though marvelling a little that it should have been deemed necessary to hide so simple an explanation from him, was satisfied with it now it had come. He understood at last the meaning of their withdrawal into these country seclusions, and was both sorry and proud for this great-souled relative of his, who had so nobly resolved to put conscience before self-interest. The two walked on a little; and then said Clerivault, breaking a silence between them: ‘This place consorts not with your dreams, mayhap, of what was to be; yet shall you come to be as happy as the day in it. We are few, but the moor is big. It is a wild free life thou shalt lead, and content and lustihood shalt thou draw from it. Now mount with me, I prithee, to thy chamber once again, and I will show thee things.’