recommendation of that attitude.

Everard proposed a fight for every privilege his class possessed. 'They
say,' he said, 'a nobleman fighting the odds is a sight for the gods: and
I wouldn't yield an inch of ground. It's no use calling things by fine
names--the country's ruined by cowardice. Poursuivez! I cry. Haro! at
them! The biggest hart wins in the end. I haven't a doubt about that.
And I haven't a doubt we carry the tonnage.'

'There's the people,' sighed Nevil, entangled in his uncle's haziness.

'What people?'

'I suppose the people of Great Britain count, sir.'

'Of course they do; when the battle's done, the fight lost and won.'

'Do you expect the people to look on, sir?'

'The people always wait for the winner, boy Nevil.'

The young fellow exclaimed despondingly, 'If it were a race!'

'It's like a race, and we're confoundedly out of training,' said Everard.

There he rested. A mediaeval gentleman with the docile notions of the
twelfth century, complacently driving them to grass and wattling them in
the nineteenth, could be of no use to a boy trying to think, though he
could set the youngster galloping. Nevil wandered about the woods of
Steynham, disinclined to shoot and lend a hand to country sports. The