Richard sidled away from his father, and repeated a shamefaced "No."
"Was he hostile?" inquired Adrian, smoothing his palms, and smiling.
"Yes," the boy confessed.
Here was quite another view of their position. Adrian, generally patient of results, triumphed strongly at having evoked it, and turned upon Austin Wentworth, reproving him for inducing the boy to go down to Belthorpe. Austin looked grieved. He feared that Richard had faded in his good resolve.
"I thought it his duty to go," he observed.
"It was!" said the baronet, emphatically.
"And you see what comes of it, sir," Adrian struck in. "These agricultural gentlemen, I repeat, are delicate customers to deal with. For my part I would prefer being in the hands of a policeman. We are decidedly collared by Blaize. What were his words, Ricky? Give it in his own Doric."
"He said he would transport Tom Bakewell."
Adrian smoothed his palms, and smiled again. Then they could afford to defy Mr. Blaize, he informed them significantly, and made once more a mysterious allusion to the Punic elephant, bidding his relatives be at peace. They were attaching, in his opinion, too much importance to Richard's complicity. The man was a fool, and a very extraordinary arsonite, to have an accomplice at all. It was a thing unknown in the annals of rick-burning. But one would be severer than law itself to say that a boy of fourteen had instigated to crime a full-grown man. At that rate the boy was 'father of the man' with a vengeance, and one might hear next that 'the baby was father of the boy.' They would find common sense a more benevolent ruler than poetical metaphysics.
When he had done, Austin, with his customary directness, asked him what he meant.