the difficulties before me, and to feel there was that within me which
could master them. I took a holiday and returned to Cumberland. I
found Roland there on my return. Always of a roving, adventurous
temper, though he had not then entered the army, he had, for more than
two years, been wandering over Great Britain and Ireland on foot. It
was a young knight-errant whom I embraced, and who overwhelmed me with
reproaches that I should be reading for the law. There had never been a
lawyer in the family! It was about that time, I think, that I petrified
him with the discovery of the printer! I knew not exactly wherefore,
whether from jealousy, fear, foreboding, but it certainly was a pain
that seized me when I learned from Roland that he had become intimate at
Compton Hall. Roland and Lord Rainsforth had met at the house of a
neighboring gentleman, and Lord Rainsforth had welcomed his
acquaintance, at first, perhaps, for my sake, afterwards for his own.

"I could not for the life of me," continued my father, "ask Roland if he
admired Ellinor; but when I found that he did not put that question to
me, I trembled!

"We went to Compton together, speaking little by the way. We stayed
there some days."

My father here thrust his hand into his waistcoat. All men have their
little ways, which denote much; and when my father thrust his hand into
his waistcoat, it was always a sign of some mental effort,--he was going
to prove or to argue, to moralize or to preach. Therefore, though I was
listening before with all my ears, I believe I had, speaking
magnetically and mesmerically, an extra pair of ears, a new sense
supplied to me, when my father put his hand into his waistcoat.