His four years in Bordeaux had spoiled him for strict business, without teaching him anything else practical enough to please his father, who, when he found that his son persisted in declining the stool in the dark counting-room in Crane Alley, packed him off to the care of his brother, Sir Hildebrand Osbaldistone of Osbaldistone Hall in Northumberland, there to repent of his disobedience.
"I will have no idlers about me," he said, "I will not ask even my own son twice to be my friend and my partner. One of my nephews shall take the place in the firm which you have declined."
And old Mr. Osbaldistone, of the firm of Osbaldistone and Tresham, merchants in London town, being above all things a man of his word, Master Frank took to the North Road accordingly, an exile from his home and disinherited of his patrimony.
At first he was gloomy enough. He was leaving behind him wealth, ease, society. As he looked back from the heights of Highgate, the bells of the city steeples rang out their "Turn again, Whittington!" And to tell the truth, Frank Osbaldistone felt half inclined to obey. But the thought of his father's grave scorn held him to his purpose, and soon the delights of travel and the quickly changing scene chased the sadness from his heart. Indeed, as was natural to a young man, a good horse under his thigh and fifty guineas in his pocket helped amazingly to put him in the best humour with himself.
The company Frank met with on the North Road was commonplace and dull. But one poor man, a sort of army officer in a gold-laced hat, whose martial courage was more than doubtful, amused Frank Osbaldistone by clinging desperately to a small but apparently very heavy portmanteau, which he carried on the pillion before him, never parting from it for a moment. This man's talk was all of well-dressed highwaymen, whose conversation and manners induced the unwary to join company with them. Then in some shady dell whistling up their men, the unlucky traveller found himself despoiled—of his goods certainly, perhaps also of his life.
It delighted Frank's boyish humour beyond measure to play upon the fears of this gallant King's officer—which he proceeded to do by asking him first whether his bag were heavy or not, then by hinting that he would like to be informed as to his route, and finally by offering to take the bag on his own pillion and race him with the added weight to the nearest village.
This last audacious proposal almost took the man's breath away, and from that moment he was convinced that Frank was none other than the "Golden Farmer" himself in disguise.
At Darlington, the landlord of their inn introduced a Scotch cattle dealer, a certain Mr. Campbell, to share their meal. He was a stern-faced, dark-complexioned man, with a martial countenance and an air of instinctive command which took possession of the company at once. The lawyer, the doctor, the clergyman, even Frank himself, found themselves listening with deference to the words of this plainly dressed, unobtrusive, Scottish drover. As for the man with the weighty bag, he fairly hung upon his words. And especially so when the landlord informed the company that Mr. Campbell had with his own hand beaten off seven highwaymen.
"Thou art deceived, friend Jonathan," said the Scot, "they were but two, and as beggarly loons as man could wish to meet withal!"
"Upon my word, sir," cried Morris, for that was the name of the man with the portmanteau, edging himself nearer to Mr. Campbell, "really and actually did you beat two highwaymen with your own hand?"