"I cannot bear this, Sisty! Cease, cease!"

"No; for do you not yet understand me? Will it not be better still if
your son--yours--restore to your Austin all that he lost, no matter how?
If through your son, mother, you do indeed make the world hear of your
husband's genius, restore the spring to his mind, the glory to his
pursuits; if you rebuild even that vaunted ancestral name which is glory
to our poor sonless Roland; if your son can restore the decay of
generations, and reconstruct from the dust the whole house into which
you have entered, its meek, presiding angel,--all, mother! if this can
be done, it will be your work; for unless you can share my ambition,
unless you can dry those eyes, and smile in my face, and bid me go, with
a cheerful voice, all my courage melts from my heart, and again I say, I
cannot leave you!"

Then my mother folded her arms round me, and we both wept, and could not
speak; but we were both happy.




CHAPTER IV.


Now the worst was over, and my mother was the most heroic of us all. So
I began to prepare myself in good earnest, and I followed Trevanion's
instructions with a perseverance which I could never, at that young day,
have thrown into the dead life of books. I was in a good school,
amongst our Cumberland sheep-walks, to learn those simple elements of
rural art which belong to the pastoral state. Mr. Sidney, in his