A March on London | Page 4

is
right for the son of a scholar to be, and you must bear in mind that
some day you will become a gentleman yourself, and I trust a learned
one. I have arranged with the good prior here that you shall go every
day to the monastery to be instructed for three hours by one of his
monks. In future you will take your meals with me, and I will see that

your attire is in order, and that you go decent as befits your station.
What hours is he to attend, Prior?"
"From nine till twelve."
"You hear--from nine to twelve. In the afternoon I will procure a
teacher for you in arms. In these days every gentleman must learn the
use of his weapons. I, myself, although most peacefully inclined, have
more than once been forced, when abroad, to use them. A man who
cannot do so becomes the butt of fools, and loses his self-respect."
"I shall like that, sir," Edgar said, eagerly. "I can play at quarter- staff
now with any boy of my size in the village."
"Well, there must be no more of that," his father said. "Up to the
present you have been but a child, but it is time now that you should
cease to consort with village boys and prepare for another station in life.
They may be good boys--I know naught about them--but they are not
fit associates for you. I am not blaming you," he said more kindly as he
saw the boy's face fall. "It was natural that you, having no associates of
your own rank, should make friends where you could find them. I trust
that it has done you no harm. Well, Prior, this day week the boy shall
come to you. I must get befitting clothes for him, or the other pupils
will think that he is the son of a hedge tinker."
An hour later Andrew was despatched to Dartford in a cart hired in the
village, with orders to bring back with him a tailor, also to inquire as to
who was considered the best teacher of arms in the town, and to engage
him to come up for an hour every afternoon to instruct Edgar.
Seven years had passed since that time, and the rough and unkempt boy
had grown into a tall young fellow, who had done fair credit to his
teacher at the convent, and had profited to the full by the teaching of
the old soldier who had been his instructor in arms. His father had,
unconsciously, been also a good teacher to him. He had, with a great
effort, broken through the habits to which he had been so long wedded.
A young waiting-maid now assisted the housekeeper. The meals were
no longer hastily snatched and often eaten standing, but were decently

served in order, and occupied a considerable time, the greater portion of
which was spent in pleasant chat either upon the scenes which Mr.
Ormskirk had witnessed abroad, or in talk on the subjects the boy was
studying; sometimes also upon Mr. Ormskirk's researches and the
hopes he entertained from them; and as Edgar grew older, upon the
ordinary topics of the day, the grievances caused by the heavy taxation,
the troubles of the time and the course of events that had led to them;
for, although very ignorant of contemporary matters, Mr. Ormskirk was
well acquainted with the history of the country up to the time when he
had first gone abroad.
The recluse was surprised at the interest he himself came to feel in
these conversations. While endeavouring to open his son's mind he
opened his own, and although when Edgar was not present he pursued
his researches as assiduously as before, he was no longer lost in fits of
abstraction, and would even occasionally walk down to the village
when Edgar went to school in order to continue the conversation upon
which they were engaged. Edgar on his part soon ceased to regard his
father as a stranger, and his admiration for his store of information and
learning served as a stimulant to his studies, for which his previous life
had given him but little liking.
For the last two years, however, his father had seen with regret that
there was but little hope of making a profound scholar of him, and that
unless he himself could discover the solution of the problems that still
eluded him, there was little chance of it being found by his successor.
Once roused, he had the good sense to see that it was not in such a life
that Edgar was likely to find success, and he wisely abandoned the idea
of pressing a task upon him that he saw was unfitted to the boy's nature.
The