At first the boy was restless under this transformation of surroundings which, however dreary, had been associated with some sweet times. A weight, moreover, was upon his mind, which, until he could find occasion to shift it, must still oppress and agitate him. If only he could put the question he longed to put, he would feel, he thought, whatever the nature of the answer, a more resigned harmony with his lot than ever he could attain to while that question was pending. And at length the opportunity he sought came to him, and he seized it. Every morning he read with his uncle in the Classics--Livy’s History, Isocrates’ Pleadings, Cicero on Friendship and Old Age, or the Tragedies of Sophocles--showing a mind so well balanced and informed that the tutor, finding himself in danger of being surpassed by his pupil, fell more and more into the negative rôle of assenter rather than proposer, until there came a day when he withdrew unostentatiously from the partnership, leaving the boy to conduct his own education after the manner he thought best. There was another sentiment, however, associated with this relinquishment which was neither so sagacious nor so humorous. Despondency, combined with mental inquietude and the means he took to allay them, were encouraging in Quentin Bagott at this time a habit of moody solitariness, which from an indulgence was to become an obsession, and which, in its extreme phases, only Brion could invade with impunity. The truth was that, in spite of all he had acclaimed, and wished to believe, to the contrary, an existence of pastoral seclusion and inaction, after the busy forceful life he had led, was impossible to the man, and had become only the more unendurable as his mind was gradually relieved of its apprehensions regarding a possible impeachment. A veritable _mal du pays_ ensuing, he had had recourse for its alleviation to a remedy already only too familiar to him as a begetter of dreams and oblivion. Pride, too, and the bitter chagrin of a fallen power, conscious of his neighbours’ knowledge of his own equivocal position, and of the means they were not slow to take to enforce that knowledge on him, helped to aggravate the double evil, and to drive him ever more upon himself and the means to forgetfulness. He might profess to scorn, in his own self-contained strength and the devoted efficiency of his household, the ‘slings and arrows’ of extraneous malice: his professions could gain no confirmation from his habits. Whatever the case, however, it became soon enough patent to all about him that, of the great store of wine and strong waters had over from the _Golden Lion_ in Ashburton, by far too great a proportion found its way to the ex-Judge’s table or, worse, into his private closet. And the effect was not long in revealing itself, or in pointing its own miserable moral of debasement. There is tragedy in the still smouldering ruins of a house, but only squalor in them quenched and sodden.