“Think for yourself indeed, and talk of any world but the world we’ve got?”

“If you hadn’t taught me to think for myself,” returned Richard, “I should have thought just as you did. But I’ve been thinking for myself a great deal, and I now believe that, if there be nothing more after we die, then life is so ridiculous that even the dumb, deaf, blind, heartless God you seem to believe in could not have been guilty of making it!”

“Ho! ho! That’s the good my teaching has done you? Well, we’ll have it out by and by! In the meantime, tell us how it all came about—how you came to know, I mean. You’re a good sort, whatever you believe or don’t believe, and I wish you were really ours!”

“In reality I am yours!” protested Richard. But his mother broke in.

“Would you dare, John,” she cried, “to wish him ours to his loss?”

“No, no, Jane! You know me! It was but a touch of what you call the old Adam—and I the old John! We’ve got to take care of each other! We’re all agreed about that!”

“Come and let’s have our tea!” said the mother, “and Richard shall tell us how it worked round that the old gentleman knew him. I remember him when he was young enough to be no bad match for your mother—in terms of looks, I mean. There wasn’t a more beautiful woman than my sister Robina in all England, I’m bold to say—not that it takes much boldness to say the truth!”

“It takes nearly as much as I have now,” returned Richard, realizing that he now had to tell what had made him go to his father.

He had only begun when a black cloud rose on his mother’s face and she nearly jumped from her seat.

“I told you, Richard, you were to have nothing to do with those creatures!” she cried.

“Mother,” he answered, “was it God or the devil that told me I must be neighbour to my own brother and sister? Hasn’t my father done them wrong enough that you should side with him and want me to carry on the wrong? I heard the same voice that made you want to run away with me. You were ready to be hanged for me, I was ready to lose my father for them. He, too, said I must be done with them, and I told him I wouldn’t. That was why I got you to put me on journeyman’s wages, uncle. They were starving, and I had nothing to give them. What am I in the world for, if not to set right, as far as I may, what my father has set wrong? You see, I have learned something from you, uncle!”

“I don’t see what,” returned Tuke.

He had been listening with a grave face, for he had his pride, and did not relish his nephew’s being hand-in-glove with his baseborn brother and sister.