Page:Hardings luck - nesbit.djvu/320

274 They would have made him happy, but for one thing. All this was won at the expense of those whom he loved best—the children who were his dear cousins and playfellows, the man, their father, who had moved heaven and earth to establish Dickie's claim to the title, and had been content quietly to stand aside and give up title, castle, lands, and treasure to the little cripple from Deptford.

Dickie thought of that, and almost only of that, in the days that followed.

The life he had led in that dream-world, when James the First was King, seemed to him now a very little thing compared with the present glory, of being the head of the house of Arden, of being the Providence, the loving over-lord of all these good peasant folk, who loved his name.

Yet the thought of those days when he was plain Richard Arden, son of Sir Richard Arden, living in the beautiful house at Deptford, fretted at all his joy in his present state. That, and the thought of all he owed to him who had been Lord of Arden until he came, with his lame foot and his heirship, fretted his soul as rust frets steel. These people had received him, loved him, been kind to him when he was only a tramp boy. And he was repaying them by taking away from them priceless possessions. For so he esteemed the lordship of Arden and the old lands and the old Castle.

Suppose he gave them up—the priceless possessions? Suppose he went away to that sure