“Thank you,” said Randal. “But I like walking better than riding,—I am more used to it.”
“Well, and you walk bra’ly,—there ben’t a better walker in the county. And very pleasant it is walking; and ‘t is a pretty country afore you, all the way to the Hall.”
Randal strode on, as if impatient of these attempts to flatter or to soothe; and coming at length into a broader lane, said, “I think I can find my way now. Many thanks to you, Tom;” and he forced a shilling into Tom’s horny palm. The man took it reluctantly, and a tear started to his eye. He felt more grateful for that shilling than he had for Frank’s liberal half-crown; and he thought of the poor fallen family, and forgot his own dire wrestle with the wolf at his door.
He stayed lingering in the lane till the figure of Randal was out of sight, and then returned slowly. Young Leslie continued to walk on at a quick pace. With all his intellectual culture and his restless aspirations, his breast afforded him no thought so generous, no sentiment so poetic, as those with which the unlettered clown crept slouchingly homeward.
As Randal gained a point where several lanes met on a broad piece of waste land, he began to feel tired, and his step slackened. Just then a gig emerged from one of these byroads, and took the same direction as the pedestrian. The road was rough and hilly, and the driver proceeded at a foot’s pace; so that the gig and the pedestrian went pretty well abreast.
“You seem tired, sir,” said the driver, a stout young farmer of the higher class of tenants, and he looked down compassionately on the boy’s pale countenance and weary stride. “Perhaps we are going the same way, and I can give you a lift?”
It was Randal’s habitual policy to make use of every advantage proffered to him, and he accepted the proposal frankly enough to please the honest farmer.
“A nice day, sir,” said the latter, as Randal sat by his side. “Have you come far?”
“From Rood Hall.”
“Oh, you be young Squire Leslie,” said the farmer, more respectfully, and lifting his hat.