This is not the usual way of accepting a great fortune. There was no

elation in his mind over an advance which was almost miraculous. The two

men stood, not knowing what to make of the boy in his curious mixed

nationality. To his own consciousness he had lost far more than he

gained: but how were these strangers to understand that?

This was how John Rothbury, not without a sharp pang, found out his true

name and his real position in life.

THE WHIRL OF YOUTH.

CHAPTER I.

John Rushton's early life had been so peculiar that it was not wonderful

if he found himself very much at sea when he was first plunged into the

curious conventional life of an English University. He was older than

most of the young men whom he found there--yet not very old, if he had

not been already knocked about the world a good deal and filled with

many experiences: and the first year at least passed over his head in

great confusion, during which he let himself go with the stream in

whatsoever eddy or current he might find himself,--which perhaps was not

very profitable for his moral being, nor yet for his education properly

so called. Life in the University is even more than in other places a

congeries of whirls, one round or dance of wildly rushing figures, each

encircling some swaying standard of its own, dance of the Mænads or of

the Berserkers going on for ever in a mode that sets aside all that

peacefulness of study and learning which we all, perhaps, vainly suppose

is, or ought to be, found in the very atmosphere of these abodes of

letters. I wonder if it ever was so. Did not the young clergy whirl too,

in circles of asceticism or mutual devotion, or perhaps forbidden and

secret pleasure, one trooping after another in the earliest days?

Certainly the young Cavaliers must have done so, and likewise the young

Puritans each treading in the other's steps, holding the other's coats,

rushing round and round. It is not Fashion or Society alone that puts up

those unsteady flagstaff's and leads the wild dance around them. It is

nature, we must believe, since they exist everywhere. John got into the

rush of the idle, and flew along in a monotonous circle among them like

the merry-go-round at a fair. He did not like it much, but the whirl

caught him and plucked at his feet and set him all in motion in the

pathway of the others. And then he fell farther down into a wilder rush,

still the whirl (so called) of pleasure and dissipation: and then

recovering with an effort got back into the rush of the cultured and

æsthetic and whirled through the world of pictures and furniture and

poetry, finding no rest for the sole of his foot. His head was a little

dazed with all these gyrations: he was a steady fellow, in fact, liking

to feel firm ground under him, and to live his own way. And it was

chiefly because his guardians and best friends--though in fact the sway

of the guardians was virtually over--were intent upon conforming him to

the recognised models, and subduing his instinct to be independent, a

word into which they read other meanings, that he had come to the

University at all, a place for which he felt that he was not fitted by

previous training, nor likely to do much good in any way. At the

beginning of his second year John returned a little ashamed of himself,

feeling the strong likelihood that he would be led into one or another

of his previous follies, and the almost conviction that he would find

himself spinning like the rest in the contagion of youth and activity

before he knew.

He was pondering upon this with a little discouragement of heart,

wondering within himself with a rueful touch of humour when the first

bevy of comrades would arrive and which it would be, when a summons came

to him to go and see the Warden, which was rather an alarming call,

considering that the work which had been given to him to occupy his

vacation had not been done any more than the work of the previous year.

He pulled on accordingly that shabby little pinafore (worn the wrong way

about) of black stuff which in Oxford is called a gown, and took up his

cap and went across the quadrangle, green with the chilly greens of

October though sprinkled with yellow leaves which every breath of wind

brought down. The Warden was not an ordinary or common Don (may the rash

pen be pardoned which combines such words), but a man of note and of

judgment, though like other men he had his weaknesses. The chief of

these was that he preferred the young men of family and great position

who were put into his hands, to the humbler crew of nobodies who swarmed

around them. In the Warden, however, this was not a weakness, but a

matter of principle. When it is a weakness it is called by the

opprobrious name of snobbishness or tuft-hunting, or other still more

disagreeable appellations; but when it is a principle, it is a very

lofty one, and means that it is a finer thing to exert influence over

those who will have a great deal of power in their hands, than over

those who will have none--and that accordingly to make a great man wise

and good is a greater achievement than to influence a poor one, even if

the poor one might by chance be made into even a greater paragon of

virtue than the great. This is a perfectly solid and defensible

principle--when it is a principle, as we say; and altogether different

from that love of honours and titles which has been attributed to other

heads of houses in a less elevated way. The Warden received John with an

austere smile, followed by a look of great gravity. He said, "I hear, Mr

Rushton, and have unfortunately observed, that very little work was got

from you last year,--that, in short, your first year at the University

was to a great degree a year lost to you and no credit to the college."

"I am afraid, sir," said John, hanging his head, "that it is quite

true."

"And now we are at the beginning of another academical year, I should

like to know what you intend. Are you to join the ranks of the idlers

for good--or perhaps I should say for bad--or do you mean to make an

effort to do better? I always like to know how a man means to begin:

then we know where we are."

"I am sure you know, sir, better than any one," said John, plucking up a

heart and facing his monitor, "that a man never means it to begin with,

even if he does badly. It's not the intention that is in fault."

"Sometimes. I admit, that is the case--often, perhaps; but I am not

sure, Mr Rushton, that to yield weakly to a passing temptation is not as

bad, or nearly so, as to begin with a plan of merely pleasing oneself.

It comes to the same thing in the end."

"I did not mean it as an excuse, sir. I was merely stating a fact."

"Very well; allowing the fact--am I to understand that you are going to

let yourself be blown about by every wind, and begin without any

intention at all?"

"That's logical, I don't doubt, sir," said John; "but naturally that is

not what I mean."

The Warden gave up the point, and resumed in a different tone. "I don't

suppose," he said, "from the opportunities I have had of seeing your

work, so much, or so little rather, as it has been, that you have any

very high expectations of success at the University--of distinguishing

yourself, in short?"

No man, however stupid, likes to be told that he has no expectations of

success; and John reddened in spite of himself. But he was very

sensible, and replied with a sort of laugh, "No; I never thought I was

clever, sir, if that is what you mean?"

The Warden did not deny that that was what he meant. But he said, "With

that conviction, and not much enthusiasm for work, will you forgive me

for asking what brought you to the University at all?"

John laughed outright at this, being struck by the humour of the

question. "If every man that came up was asked that, sir," he said, "a

great many of us would be in the same box, I'm afraid."

The Warden was not a man who disliked a straightforward answer. He

preferred a young man who stood to his guns. "That is true enough," he

said; "but there are other motives in many of these cases. Parents

insist on it--or future prospects demand it. Some men would find their

future profession barred to them without a University education; or, at

least, would find it more difficult to get on; or would be discredited

more or less among the people they are naturally with. But you, I

believe, don't contemplate entering any profession?"

The rapid reflection in John's mind that he was evidently not one of

those who was considered to be naturally in the society of people who

cared for a University degree, was inevitable; and it perhaps moved him

to the unintentional impertinence of a personal reference. "You don't

say that to Scarfield, sir," he said, quickly, "and he has no more

intention of entering a profession than I have." He said it quickly, and

repented it even more quickly than he spoke.

"Lord Scarfield," said the Warden, calmly, "is a man who will have a

great deal of influence in his generation. He will be what is called a

great man in his county; he may be a power for good or evil according as

his mind is trained now. I make this explanation for the sake of the

prejudices which are abroad on the subject, though it is one you have no

right to ask, and it has no bearing on your case."

"I beg your pardon, sir," said John; "I know I had no right to say that.

I'm aware," he added, "that I'm nobody; and it's of no consequence

whether I take my degree or not. But perhaps, sir, that's rather a new

view."

"It may be a new view. I do not bind myself to old views. I have heard

that you are or will be rich, Mr Rushton; but you have no stake in the

country, nothing to bind you to it, and, I hear, rather a love of

wandering. You don't want to be fitted for the exercise of great

influence or to fill a great place. You have no parents, I understand,

to insist upon any special career, or whose place you would fill in the

world."

"It is true," said John, very red and hot, "that I never saw my father;

and that he left me only money, and no place to fill, as you say, sir.

But I have a mother whom I am as anxious to please as if she were a

duchess, and no antecedents that I know of that would deprive me of a

man's usual responsibilities. But if you think, sir, that I am no

credit, and had better withdraw from the college----"

The Warden interrupted with a wave of the hand, and indeed John's voice

was somewhat choked in his throat. "I mean nothing of the kind, nothing

of the kind, Mr Rushton! You are a young man of sense. If you think a

moment you will understand my meaning--which is that, having no special

incentive, either within yourself or without, to intellectual work, I

see no object you can have in remaining at the University, if it is only

as a method of amusing yourself,--if, in short, this year is to be a

repetition of last year, I think it well for you to turn the matter over

in your mind. If,--that is the problem. It is very likely," said the

Warden, holding out his hand to be shaken, in token of dismissal, "that

you have it in you to solve it in the right way."

John went out from this interview with a great buzzing in his head, and

the sensation of having been pricked up with red-hot irons or goaded

with sharp bayonet points, for the shock was physical as well as mental.

His pulses went at railroad speed. The blood in his veins stung him, it

flew so fiercely to the heart and back again. Such a commotion within

him must have been as good for his health as the strongest dose of the

best tonic ever known. A beggar like Scarfield, he said to himself, a

mild dilettante puppy, to be coddled and cooked into a great man--and I,

nobody! A wild young brute like So-and-so to be of importance to his

country--and I, no matter, no account! If the Warden had meant to humble

him, it was a bad way to do it; if he had meant to stimulate him, to

stir up all his energies, to taunt and defy and bully him into

well-doing--then it might be a queer way, but it was an effectual way.

And no doubt that was what the Warden meant. He had been too long

accustomed to the process of flaying young men to care very much whether

it hurt them or not. If it hurt them, so much the better, perhaps. The

hopeless kind were those whom it did not hurt.

John went back to his rooms and busied himself in arranging his

books--those books especially which he had been required to work up

during the vacation, and which, alas, he had scarcely looked at--which

had been the immediate cause of the Warden's address. He looked at them

with his head on one side as if he had been looking at a picture, and

asked himself why he had not paid the proper attention to his orders,

and thus put himself above the reach of such a reproof? But he knew very

well why his vacation work had been neglected. He had spent these merry

months in the society and the occupations which he loved best, among a

varying company of painters, now in one region of beauty, now in

another, in the fresh air, in the roughest quarters, drinking in

sunshine and dew, light and shade, to the very depths of his being. Ah,

that was life! No doubt it was a whirl too; and the young men rushed and

circled round with the others in clouds of smoke, in noisy rooms where

no man could hear his neighbour speak--sometimes, too, with equivocal

associates enough--a noisy ring, caring for nothing in heaven or earth

except "effects" and points of view and tones of colour. But probably,

because that was his own way, John lingered upon it, seeing all its good

things and none of its evils. A man could not be altogether idle among

all these busy men. He had to make a dash at an effect, to put in a

study, to fling colour on canvas somehow, or he could not keep his place

among them. It was not a mere rush of foolish feet, a mere following one

or another in a hackneyed round. He rushed to his own door and secured

it, "sporting his oak," according to a term which has probably grown

old-fashioned, against the inroad of those foolish feet which he heard

afar off clattering upon the staircase. He had to think: he would not be

driven away from his point by any invasion to-day.

But when the attempt upon his doors, and the shouts that accompanied it,

had died away, and the staircase was for a few minutes silent again, and

John sat down among his books to think over that problem, his mind,

instead of grappling with it, floated away to the scenes of his holiday,

to the wilds of Brittany and the trees of Fontainebleau, between which

he had divided himself. He had not gone far afield. He was not an

adventurous fellow. The places where everybody went were good enough for

him. He followed in his mind with a smile many a riotous expedition,

setting out in a tumult of shouts and fun, but gradually stilling into

quietude as one man after another came to the "bit" he wanted, or

stopped short arrested in a corner to record an impression, or dashed

with flying touches an effect of the ever-changing light; while the old

fellows, the steady, middle-aged men who had outgrown the great hopes

and ideals which still flushed the horizon of the young ones, settled

themselves and pegged away at pictures which were called, not according

to their subjects, but by their authors' names, as a Dupin, a

Merryweather, and so on--as recognisable as the painter's card among all

the bands of the cognoscenti. A smile came upon his face as he wandered

among these pleasing recollections--and then he came to with a sudden

start, and to the sense that he was not in the least considering his

problem, but only living over again the life that he loved best. What a

life it was! But he must put a stop to these reminiscences; he must

think of the question before him. Then a smile came over John's face as

he asked himself whether if he were to send the Warden a picture or a

drawing, representing the best he could do--that would please the head

of the college as well as the essay which John knew he could not do half

so well? He remembered having heard some one say that if a certain minor

canon with a beautiful voice had sung something out of the "Messiah"

when he went up into the pulpit, instead of insisting on preaching a

very poor sermon, how much better it would have been,--how much more

edifying for his audience and satisfactory for himself. Then John pulled

himself up again. The only distinct thing before him was that he did not

mean to allow himself to be beaten. They should see that he was not to

be bullied out of the University. "If the work has to be done," he said

to himself, "why, I must do it. I was a fool not to do it when I had

time. But I am not going to be beaten. I shan't write myself down an ass

to please the Warden. And here goes!"

Did he accomplish that essay? Did he read his books, the books which he

ought to have read in the Long Vacation? All I can say at this moment is

that he set himself down very squarely at his table as if he meant it,

placed one of them open before him, one which he had already looked

into, dipped his pen into the ink----

But just then there came another tumult of footsteps up the staircase,

and kicks against the closed doors. What a noise they made, one

encouraging another to "sing out" to him, "Rushton, I say! Jack, old

fellow! Confound you, can't you open?" they shouted, and a great deal

more; while John sat and grinned to himself within the castle gate.

CHAPTER II.

The essay, I need not say, on which John laboured, inking himself body

and soul, was not by any means finished at one sitting. He toiled at it

during the whole of the first week which was the term of grace. It was

not a good essay. The books, read in a hurry and very imperfectly, did

not convey to him by any means all the sense that was in them; his

remarks were very conventional, and, if truth must be told, commonplace.

That was not John's line, neither is it by any means the only one in

which a man even at the University can distinguish himself. He may row

or he may run, which all the world knows are still more ready ways to

distinction, or he may play racquets or something else for the 'Varsity,

or he may at least make a good score in the college eleven--all of which

things count, at least, as much as essays. John, however, did none of

these. He knew more of some things, and these not inconsiderable things,

than some of the Dons, and he was no more to be compared with the silly

young undergraduates who carried him (sometimes) away in their whirls,

than Hyperion to a Satyr. Alas! that happens often enough: it is a

mystery, one of the greatest within mortal ken, but none of us can tell

why. With John it was different: it was in the carelessness of strength,

not the fatal lapse of weakness, that he went astray.

But he did not know how to write an essay: he did it against the grain,

and knowing all the time how bad it was, even in the midst of the

current which soon began again to rush around him. He was still sitting

at it labouring to finish it, seeing land he thought, and panting and

struggling to get to that blessed shore, when his rooms filled one

afternoon with a crowd that was very much at leisure though it had a

hundred things to do. There was a capital match on at the Parks, and he

must come to see it, they cried. And there were two fellows going out

for a spin on the river, on whose heads a great many bets were laid; and

there was--but it will not be expected of me that I should know what was

going on in an afternoon in October to occupy a band of boys calling

themselves men, and agog after any and every amusement. A few sat on the

table dangling their legs, and shutting out the light from John's

laboured page, while the others stood about--one pair calling out of the

window over their shoulders remarks upon the passers-by, and another

pair inside lunging at each other with John's foils, and a few more

turning over the yellow novels of which he had always a great stock. "I

say, Rushton," they cried, "come along; you're losing all the afternoon

on that rot. We shan't see half of the match if you don't look sharp."

"Who would have thought of Jack turning out a sap," cried another, who

was from Eton, and used the language of that valuable seminary.

"A fellow with his pockets full of money," cried another, "and nobody to

call him over the coals."

"Oh, look here," cried the men at the window; "here's old Chortles going

out for a walk, and Peters after him. Oh, you fellows, shouldn't you

like to be Peters, going out for an hour and a half's _viva voce,

ambulando_! that's what it is to be a pet of old Chortles, oh ho! oh

ho!"

Chortles, it may be here said, was an affectionate nickname, or

otherwise, applied to the Warden, on account of a peculiarity in his

voice.

"Jove," cried the others, "if there isn't Scarfield sailing along with

the Jolly Bruiser right across old Chortles' nose. By George, what's

going to happen? Chortles' got an eye like a hawk, though he pretends to

wear glasses, and Scarry, poor wretch, is as blind as a bat. Oh, good

Lord!" cried the spectators, in tones of awe.

Three other young men precipitated themselves on the shoulders of the

foregoing to see the fun, as they said: that a dilettante young

nobleman, the pink of propriety, should know the Jolly Bruiser at all,

was an unthought-of delight, and all the company crowded to see, if not

with their own yet with others' eyes.

"Oh, Lord!" reported the first speaker, "to see Scarry sailing on, with

a deal of side, too--not a thought of what he's coming to. Bravo,

Peters! he's putting up a signal, but the blind ass doesn't see.

Bruiser's in a dead funk now, trying to run away--Scarry's got hold of

his arm. Oh, _by_ Jove!"

"What's up now?" they all cried.

"Peters' behaving like a brick," said another, over his shoulder.

"Pointing over to the other side--to Shrimpton's, by all that's

dreadful!--where the last thing out is Chortles himself as large as

life. Out of the frying-pan into the fire for Peters, eh?"

"Did he think he'd do it, then?" said another. "I say, you fellows,

don't squeeze a man flat! Chortles ain't so innocent as he looks, not by

a long way. Gives a nod, as much as to say I'll come to you by-and-by;

and goes for Scarry straight----"

Here there was a chorus of laughter, suddenly subdued.

"Silence, you fellows! he's looking this way. Just one glance, Rushy,

but he sees it's your windows, and you're in for it. Oh, Jove! to see

the Warden touching his hat to Jim Tucker! Jim squashed, the unjolliest

Bruiser you ever saw, half a foot shorter at the least, makes

tracks--and, Lord! to see Chortles holding Scarry with his eye! I'd give

all my lands and castles to hear what he says!"

"Ah! it's all very well for Scarry," said another--"cool as a cucumber,

don't you know, with nothing against him, and a title at his back;

whereas if it were you or me----"

"Explaining he is, by Jove! Don't you see old Chortles shutting him up?

Come to me this evening after hall--that's what he's saying, bet you

anything! Oh, I wish I could be there to see; and, Lord! there he goes

across to Shrimpton's: Peters has remembered, poor old man! He's being

led to execution, and he knows it. It was all to save that prig Scarry,

who will never lift a finger for him."

"I say, you fellows, are we going to stay here all the afternoon?"

said--this incident being over--another of the band. John had been

sitting, his pen suspended in his hand, during the little episode above

described. The cloud of young men at the window had shut out the light,

while the cries and stamps of the fencers who had carried on through all

the tumult came in now suddenly like a solo after a chorus. John's ideas

were not very quick to come at any time, and that last bit of struggling

towards the end of a very unwilling literary exercise is perhaps the

worst of all. You are breathless with sight of the shore so near at

hand, and longing to get to it. He had not been able to refuse his

interest to these incidents as seen from the window, and of course he

wanted to be out in the fresh air, and the contagion of restlessness in

the others--who could not keep either legs or arms quiet for a moment,

and now began to sprawl all about his room, some taking sides in the

mock contest between the fencers, some pulling about his books, his

photographs on the mantelpiece, and even his portfolios of sketches in

the corner--gained on him in spite of himself: and the obstinacy of

pride was not perhaps a very sustaining motive, though indeed it was

this alone, and not any pleasure in work or desire to do it well, which

chained him to that hopeful manuscript. "I wish you'd go," he said, with

the straightforwardness which was not out of place in that society.

"Brunton, there's drinks in the cupboard; you know where to find them.

Help yourselves, for goodness' sake, and go! I must get this confounded

thing before I stir, and how can I get on with all of you ballyragging

about?"

"Rubbish!" said Brunton. "Leave it till after. You can get it done

another time."

"What other time?" said John, setting his elbows square on the table.

"I never knew Jack to be a sap before," said the Eton man. "Come on, and

leave him to his fate."

Then one detachment went rushing down the staircase, filling the air

with the tumult of their steps and voices. But the fencers and their

audience still kept the ground.

"What a deuced waste of time!" said Brunton, turning over the sheets.

"By George, Jack, you'll spoil the college! Look here, Gaison, and blush

if you can for your confounded swagger of a place. See what we can do

here--and the first week of term, too!"

"Rushy, my boy, you're too good to live!" said the other man.

"I'll tell you what!" said John, in his impatience--but he checked

himself, for the fencers had put up their foils and were preparing to

move.

"Come along," they said; "let's look up the Bruiser and see how he likes

to meet old Chortles full face in the High. Let's go and have a game of

billiards. Let's have a stroll somewhere. Let's do something. That

fellow with his pen is enough to bore a man out of his life."

Brunton alone stayed, the most intimate, but not the most desirable, of

John's friends. He was intimate solely because he had made up his mind

to be so, independent of John's sentiments, perhaps because he had an

admiration for John--which was the most flattering way of explaining it,

and even over a sensible fellow like John Rushton exercised a certain

agreeable influence--perhaps for other reasons. He had sought him by

night and day. He had always been at hand when the young man wanted

diversion, or even merely a reason for amusing himself--and the

consequence was that Brunton had grown into a necessity, a sort of

accompaniment to John's life. He had helped himself to some of the

drinks in the cupboard, and now sat astride on a chair with his glass in

his hand staring across the back of it at John's composition which had

been resumed with doubtful success. John was unspeakably burdened and

angered by the presence of this spectator, but it is not so easy to

dismiss a single visitor as it is to adjure a crowd to go away. At

length "I say, old fellow," Brunton said.

John made a movement of impatience with his hand, and laboured on.

"I say, when are you coming down by Iffley, the Old Hatchet way? What

jolly days we had there last term. By the way, there's some one

there----Beg pardon, old man, if I'm interrupting----"

"Of course you're interrupting," cried John. "Look here. I'm going to

finish this before I budge, if the devil himself were to interfere." He

threw down his pen and looked his friend in the face. "If you've got

anything to say that wants saying, say it and be done with it in the

name of----"

"Ah! I knew I'd fetch you so!" cried the other. "Well, I'll tell you

what it is. There's a little person there that wants to see you very

badly--and a very pretty little person too. She says, 'Ain't Mr Rushton

up this year?--ain't Mr Rushton a-coming out to see us? Me and mother

thinks a deal of Mr Rushton. He ain't a bit like the rest of you

gentlemen.'"

"Well?" said John, red, but fierce.

"Well! I told her I'd tell you. It's a poor compliment for the rest of

us, Jack: but you've only to go in and win."

"Stuff," said John, "and fudge and bosh, and whatever else there is

that's silly. I understand what she means. I have some respect for a

woman, whoever she is."

"Oh, respect!" said Brunton; "I expect she would like something a little

warmer than that. And she says you promised to bring her something the

very first day you were up--and you've been up a week--hence those

tears."

"I promised to bring her something?" said John, with confusion: and then

he became fiery red once more.

"Don't you think you'd like a stroll?" he added; "don't you think you'd

like a game at billiards? there's always some one about that has nothing

to do. It's a pity to lose the whole afternoon here."

"That's a broad hint, anyhow," cried the other, laughing. "Well, I'll

go--but don't forget the Hatchet, old fellow, and the arbour in the

garden, and the maid of the inn. Oh, I'm off. You need not spoil your

books throwing them at me."

When he was alone John put down his pen again and took out his

handkerchief and wiped his forehead. His countenance was crimson and the

blood all a-boil in his veins. "What a fool I am, what a double-dashed

fool I have been," he said to himself. And it was some time before he

could resume the work at which he had so laboured and struggled. This

was a greater interruption than anything made by the comrades who had

thronged and troubled him. Yet after a while he surmounted this also,

and betook himself to his work with such energy that he did at last

struggle through. Well! it was not very much when it was done: probably

no less valuable piece of work ever took so much time before. It had

cost him a great deal of trouble, and now that it was completed it was

of less than no use to anybody. The unfortunate tutor to whom he would

have to read it would groan his head off before it was finished, and

then it would be flung with relief into the fire. And yet he had spent

all these days at it, cudgelled his brains, and almost cudgelled some of

the idle fellows who had tried to stop him--for this wretched thing that

was nothing, which was less than worthless! Few can perhaps see this so

distinctly and with so powerful an apprehension as John did. He put it

away in his desk with a grim smile, and then just as twilight was coming

on he went out--to stretch his limbs and fill his lungs with that damp

Oxford air which is perhaps just better than no air at all.

He was swinging along over Maudlin Bridge on his walk, "thinking hard,"

as he would have said, when there came suddenly up out of the twilight a

little figure, which stopped and clasped its hands at sight of him, with

a little cry. "Oh, is it really you, Mr Rushton?" which chimed in, in a

very troublous and distressing manner, with John's thoughts.

"And is this you, Miss--Miss Millar," he said, perturbed, "so far from

home?"

"Yes," she said, "it's a bit late. I've been in town doin' two or three

little things for mother, and I see it was getting dark, and started

runnin'--and then I thought that would just make folks stare--and then I

saw as it was you----Oh, Mr Rushton, you've never been to see us--though

you promised----"

"I have only been up a very little time. I--I have had a great deal to

do."

"Ah," said the girl, "I know what you gentlemen has to do--just to find

out every day something new to amuse yourselves--not like us as has to

work."

"I assure you, Mary, it was work with me--real work, though you may not

believe it," he said.

She came a little nearer to him at the sound of her own name, and,

looking up, said in a subdued tone, "I'd believe anything you said."

Fiercely red once more became John, hot as with a furnace-blast: but

nobody saw this, not even the pair of eyes that were for a moment lifted

to his.

"I'm afraid I don't deserve as much as that," he said, humbly. "I say

things I don't mean, just like the rest."

"I wouldn't believe anybody but yourself as said so. Perhaps you didn't

mean it then, Mr Rushton, when you promised me _that_."

"What did I promise you, Mary?"

"Oh, Mr Rushton, you can't--you can't have forgotten! You promised me a

nice gold locket with your picture in it."

They were walking on now side by side in the growing dimness, and John

had not even daylight to protect him, or the expression of his face.

"My picture?" he said, in dismay. "Was I such a fool as all that? You

shall have the gold locket and welcome, Mary; but you don't mean to say

you would like my ugly mug inside?"

"Oh, ugly, indeed!" she said; "that's just what I should like best."

Poor John, not knowing what to say, overwhelmed with humiliation and

shame, yet a little ruefully elated, too, that she should like his ugly

mug, made a clumsy diversion by a total change of subject, and asked

hurriedly whether anything had happened since he had been away.

"Oh, happened!" she cried, annoyed not to pursue the more interesting

subject. "Nothing ever happens down Iffley way: at least no more than

the old thing as mother is always at me to--marry: and I shouldn't

wonder if I did some day, just for a change----"

"And who," said John, with that instant impulse to kick him, which is

natural to his kind, "is the happy man?"

"Oh, you know, Mr Rushton. It's Jim Kington, as you've heard before.

It's a bit hard," said the girl, with something like a suppressed sob,

"after seeing so much of you gentlemen and your ways, to settle down for

life with such a common man."

"Would you like, then, to marry--a gentleman?" John said. He

did not know why he said it--unthinking, and yet not without a

thought--wantonly, because it was dangerous, because he wanted to see

what she would say.

"Oh, Mr Rushton!" she said, hanging her head: and suddenly, to his

consternation, he felt a timid touch, her hand stealing within his arm.

"It wouldn't be for your good, Mary," he said, with energy. "You don't

know what you would have to go through. How would you like to have

people looking down upon you, laughing at you behind your back, perhaps

mocking you before your face, and all your little faults made a fuss

about, and nobody to be at ease with. I don't think you would find it a

happy fate."

"If you think I have such bad manners, Mr Rushton! but not when I take

pains. I know how to hold my head as high as the best, and give them

back as good----And, besides, I am very quick at picking things up, and

I'd soon learn----"

"Some things are not so easily learned," said John. "I don't think you'd

find it a happy fate."

"Oh, Mr Rushton," she said, again hanging with a little weight upon his

arm, holding it close, "why should I mind if he loved me?--I'd be 'appy

anywhere, if I never saw a single soul, only to pass my life along

of----'im!"

She said "'im," but meant "you," plainer than words could say. And John

for a moment stood still, planting his feet on the soil, feeling the

whirl catch them, the quickening current, the sweep of a senseless

flood: yet conscious to the very core that he did not love the girl--not

the very least in the world.

CHAPTER III.

It was not very long after this evening walk that John found himself in

a company of the very _élite_ of his college. They knew themselves to be

the _élite_, and that was enough for them. Sometimes their claim to this

place was rudely assailed by outsiders; sometimes it was the subject of

mockery: but this mattered very little to the certainty which filled

their youthful bosoms. They did not sit upon tables and hang out of

windows like the others. The table in the centre of the room was strewn

with prints, with photographs from pictures, and curiosities of all

kinds. There was a little Tanagra figure on the mantelpiece, holding a

central place in its little shrine of red velvet, and other ornaments of

equal refinement arranged with the greatest care on either side. On the

wall above, usually occupied by an imbecile mirror, was a round picture

which Lord Scarfield, the owner of the rooms, who had a lisp, sometimes

talked of as "my Tondo" and sometimes as "my Bottithelli." It was but a

copy, I need not say, but it came a great deal into his conversation. He

himself sat in an antique chair with a high back, at one side of the

fireplace, and his little colourless head, with its very light hair,

stood out almost like an ivory from the dark damask. He was aware of the

fact and liked it, and so were the other _habitués_ of these rooms aware

of it, feeling themselves called upon to be struck by this, as they

came in one by one, and nodded at their host, and sat down somewhere

within reach of the table if they could, if not in twos and little

groups round the wall, where a number of abstruse conversations went on,

chiefly about art, but likewise upon social subjects. John had been

drawn into this supreme company chiefly on the score that he knew

something practically of art, though they thought in a rude way, without

a due sense of its fine affinities and symbolisms--but yet with a

vulgar, practical acquaintance which no doubt counted for something.

When he went in Scarfield was giving a description of that meeting with

the Warden which John's other friends had watched from the window.

"He ith always very thivil," said the little lord, "but I had every

reathon to expect a row. Peterth made me a thign to cut and run--but why

thould I cut and run? The Bruither is a perthonage in his way--and

Thortles loves a perthonage. I was very punctual after Hall--likes you

to be punctual, Thortles doth. Thaid he was very thorry to thee me in

thuch company. 'Why, thir?' I thaid. Thortles taken aback by that. 'Why

thir! do I need to thay why?' 'Yeth thir, pleath,' thaid I, and I waited

for an answer. Never thaw a man more done in my life."

"Chortles like a nettle, soft as silk," cried another, losing the thread

of his metaphor, "when you face him out."

"It wathn't that," said Scarfield; "it wath theething the kid in his

mother'th milk--that's what it was. Very fond of talking to me about my

influence and tho forth. 'You tell me, thir,' thaid I, 'to exercise a

good influence. Can't do that without knowing men of all thorts, thir,

don't you know? Bruither's a very thelect thort. Had a very improving

conversation--lotth of information in it. Know his thort quite well now.

Able to exercise influence. Just your own line, thir; what you've always

thaid----"

"Bravo, Scarfield!" said his intimates, in chorus. "Nobody can manage

Chortles like old Scar."

"Laughed and stared a bit, and then thays he, 'If it's from tho high a

principle, Scarfield!'--and let me off. Poor old Peterth got it hot

after me. You're bound to put it out on thome one when you are a Don."

"I say," said an eager youth, "where can one get anything like that

jolly little statue there? I'd give a lot of money for one. I suppose it

costs the eyes out of your head."

"It costs personal research and knowledge," said another, "which are

more expensive still. There are imitations, however, which I daresay

you'd find do just as well."

"Where could one get it, Rushton?" said the young man. "You're not so

high and mighty as these other fellows--you'll give a man an answer.

I've got rooms as bare as a post, and I must get them fit for a

Christian to live in."

"Christian!" said the man at the other side. "Don't go in for that

bastard incongruity called Christian art, for goodness' sake: and don't

put questions of that sort in Scarfield's rooms. He's what they call an

eclectic, don't you know--mixes up styles and things in a way that makes

you shudder. A priceless Tanagra there and a heavy-jowelled Botticelli

over it--saints and angels, what a mixture! I could show you----"

"A lot of sweepings of the excavations," said John, in the boy's ear.

"Oh, will you, please?" said the lad. He was eager to follow wherever

the learned might lead.

"Influence is the great thing," said another, whose name was Sutton.

"Give us only a little time and we'll move the world. But nobody half

owns the power of it yet. I was speaking to some of those fellows by the

river the other day. I told them they didn't see their power. Why,

they've got the lever in their hands to upset everything, if they

choose! Talk of a House of Lords! I told them they're all hereditary

legislators by right of their knotty fists and the sweat of their

brows!"

"Let 'em wath it off first," said Scarfield, solemnly, from his chair.

"Why should they wash it off? We must meet the people on their own

ground. Would you let a little squeamish prejudice or nicety come

between you and the masters of the world?"

"I take a little exception to that," said another. "Why shouldn't they

all learn to be gentlemen in their habits? Oxford fellows scattered here

and there in every workshop and trades union, and so forth--that is what

would do good. I said so to Bristowe up at the People's Palace, as they

call it. I said, 'Get a few Oxford men to sit in the reading-room and

mix with those fellows.' You would see a transformation in no time."

"We took a lot to Florence, don't you remember, Bailey?" said a third

young man; "all excited with what they were going to see: but they were

rather puzzled, though, when we got there. We had to talk ourselves

hoarse explaining--and I doubt if they were much the wiser."

"Don't say so, Harry! Lady Betty had them out to her villa to tea, and

how they did stare and gaze at the landscape--don't you remember?--and

then at her, in her shimmering silks, like a lady of King Arthur's

court--her face full of expression, and that reminiscent expressiveness

in particular, which is the special portion of----"

"Woman is the great mystery after all," said a thoughtful young man.

"The ladies did their best, I must say, out there," said Harry,

neglecting this challenge. "But then those fellows expected, don't you

know, that it was to be the same in town. We told them it couldn't be

just the same, with all a woman's engagements. Nothing much to do in

Florence, but a whirl in London--but some of them didn't see it. We told

them to come to our rooms and welcome; but after a while they didn't

seem to care so much for our rooms. They want social advancement, don't

you see--and to make friends there will be of use."

"The Bruither, tho far as I could make out," said Scarfield, "wanths a

public-house--thays they all come to public-houthes in the course of

time. And that's his ambition--if you like to call it thocial

advancement, you can."

"The Bruiser is abnormal," said Bailey. "He's a creation of false needs

and false interests, so far as Oxford is concerned. Curiosity to know

what such a being is like must have been your motive, Scarfield: for I

ask what would the highest illumination and the purest influence do for

a man like that--all physical force and brute strength--with an ambition

for a public-house: a public-house!"

"I shouldn't mind starting a public-house myself," said Sutton; "fine

sphere, if you approach it rightly. Why, you might get the very lives of

all these fellows in your hands, and play upon them like an instrument.

Get them to drop their beer, don't you know, little by little. I once

offered to take the pledge myself if one of them would. And he did--or

rather she did, for it was a woman, as it happened. Oh, they're very

open to influence! You can get them to do almost anything--for a time."

"Now it is fully established what an Oxford Settlement can do in a poor

neighbourhood, we have the game in our own hands," said another. "Give

them refined pleasures--that's the thing--and you see how it answers. In

Bethnal Green they respond to Brahms and Rubinstein, as none of your

smart people do. You see it is virgin soil--they never knew till now

what beautiful things were."

"And yet they say the People's Palace is a failure!"

"Ah, I told you! It was not in the hands of University men. I said to

Bristowe, 'Don't you think a few Oxford men mixing among them would soon

change the tone?' He didn't seem to see it. But there is nothing else.

Diffuse culture among the masses: let them see what it has done for

_us_: give them examples to study as well as principles. There is no

other way to work--at least it is the best. Christ and the apostles did

the same sort of thing. It was more rudimentary in their day.

Civilisation has multiplied the wants of humanity, and scientific

methods have increased our power. We have got everything in our hands.

What are politics or theories? a settlement of ours in every district,

leaving our own sphere to leaven theirs--that is what the people want."

"When they don't like the Bruither better, and his public-house," said

Scarfield. "I had thome of those fellowth up once to thee my Tondo. They

stared, and then they made their remarks. 'I don't call her pretty,'

they thaid--'not a bit; and nobody could write like that. I'm sure I

couldn't write with my hand out like that; and them shavers in wings

making eyes at her: and she might a put a rag on the babby to thave it

from catching cold.'"

Scarfield was something of a mimic, and the party was in his rooms, and

there was a laugh, but a laugh very speedily suppressed.

"That's not my experience," said Bailey. "I find them full of respect.

If you fellows would only put your shoulders to the wheel, and all of

you do something, by Heaven we'd move the world."

"Don't sneer at politics," said a young man, who had just come in. "You

should first feel the swing of them, and hundreds of fellows roaring at

your back. I'm in with all the strikes, don't you know. I tell them they

oughtn't to stand it--not a day. A man's wages should be what he can

live on comfortably with his wife and children, not any cursed balance

of trade. What does it matter whether the masters get their profit or

not? Confound the masters!--selfish beggars, setting up their unions

too, forsooth, as if they had an equal right. The right's with the

masses that have the work to do. When I see them sitting down contented

and taking whatever is offered them, off I go and hold a meeting or two.

And as for response!--if you once heard them shouting with you, by Jove

you'd never try any of your dilettante ways again."

"Thoftly, my good fellow, thoftly," said Scarfield, from his chair. "We

don't like such coarth thpeaking here----"

"Brutal," said Bailey, "brutal, encouraging all their worst instincts.

That is not, from my point of view, the mission of the Oxford man. I

wouldn't interfere with these rude problems: if you let them alone they

will settle themselves. Why must they marry and fill the world with

hungry children and get into difficulties about wages? I don't want to

marry. I make myself a happy life of art and refined enjoyment. Why

shouldn't they? I have no sympathy with your shouting, your talk of

wages, and so forth. If they did without wives and children they would

get on well enough. _I_ can't afford wives and children. Scarfield's

Botticelli to look at, or one of your own if you can afford it, is

enough for me."

"There's something in strikes when you can do it," said a youth in one

of the groups by the wall. "Schoolmasters, now--I'm going to be a

schoolmaster--if we could strike, it would be a fine thing; but there's

a hundred beggars waiting to step into your shoes."

"Then you must stop them," said John, in reply, who was nearest to him.

"Pull down their houses, burn their books, blow up their

schoolrooms--blind them or deafen them, if you can, still better; then

they would be out of your way."

"Oh, I say," said the youth, "that would be a cowardly business; that

would not be fair fighting; that would be a cad's way."

"There are no cads," said John. "Everything's fair on your side, nothing

on the other--that's the new doctrine. Ask Sutton: he knows."

"Everything's fair against a rat who goes against his own side," cried

the revolutionary; "everything's fair against the masters. Whenever

there's force against you, you've got a licence to meet it any way you

can. That is strategy, it's not a cowardly way."

"I am all for the rights of man, too," cried another youth, standing up

against the wall. "And Chortles is brute force, and he's going to send

me down--what am I to do?"

A sudden pause came upon the assembly. It was a fate to which all of

them were subject, and the boldest held his breath. Besides, what could

be done? there was nothing to be suggested amid all the expedients which

theoretical revolution has in store.

"I dare thay, Ripton, you deserved it," said Scarfield, in a subdued

tone.

"One is powerless," said Sutton aloud, with a sigh; "it's against

natural justice, but there's no help for it. You can't stand up alone."

"We could not stand up against Chortles if he were to send us all

down," another voice, still more subdued and solemn, said.

"You could bully him after in all the newspapers."

"Throw stones at his windows--but they'd have you up for that: blow up

the next fellow that is given your rooms."

These suggestions were made with a perilous inclination towards

frivolity which had to be stopped in the bud.

"We have no combination," said Bailey. "We're an inferior lot altogether

to the working men. Besides, the whole case is different. We pay the

Dons, don't you see, they don't pay us, and----Well, it's not a thing to

argue about. If Chortles were to send us all down----"

"Well, this is a fine thing," said the youth, who was desperate; "you're

going to move the world and upset the whole country, and you daren't jaw

old Chortles, not one of you. And I've got to go down to-morrow, and

what shall I say to my people?" the poor young fellow cried.

They all looked at him aghast, compassionate, no doubt, but quite

unwilling to share the stigma thus put upon him, or identify themselves

with his disgrace. It was John who took him by the arm and led him out,

and was the confidant of his trouble, which indeed was no out of the

way, or original, or unusual trouble, but only a tale of idleness, of

recklessness, of the usual rush and round of careless life. "I went and

apologised too," the young fellow said. "I give you my word, Rushton, it

wasn't all billiards and that, as Chortles thinks--I used to go to play

the violin, you know, for Bailey--and carry their messages for them, and

go to their meetings. I've done a little myself in the East End," he

added, with forlorn pride. "But not one of them will speak up for me, or

tell Chortles if I was a fool that it wasn't all in the one way. Scarry

can do what he likes with Chortles, but he never would mix himself up

with a fellow that's sent down."

"I am very sorry for you," said John, "and I don't want to preach: but

after this, if I were you, I would stick to my own business and get that

done first of all."

"Oh, don't you think, then, as they say," cried the young unfortunate,

"that it's a fine thing to work for other people? That's what they all

say--to do good to the lower class that haven't our advantages."

"And in what way did you think you could do good to the lower class?"

said John, grimly: but he did not pursue his subject. He kept the young

man in view, and soothed him, which was perhaps better, and saw him off

next day in somewhat better spirits, and with a certain sense that he

was a martyr to his principles stealing into his soul--which he was able

to communicate to his mother, at least, consoling, nay, making that poor

lady proud, even of the sending down.

John had quite enough to do, however, with his own difficulties, which

he had brought on himself as he well knew. He too had gone speechifying

in his time, and tried to do good to the lower classes, carried on by

the whirl of the movement of the others, whose sense of the high

superiority of the Oxford man, and his certain effect upon the world, he

had not perhaps ever seriously, certainly never enthusiastically,

shared. To do good to the lower classes, to make a transformation by his

mere presence, to influence the whole fabric of life and the rolling of

its wheels--John asked himself with a blush which there was no one to

perceive, what there was in him to do all this? and the very direction

which his feet took, almost against his will, gave him the information

he sought. Where was he going? he was turning mechanically towards the

road in which he knew another person--a person very easily influenced

indeed, and one who had taken too much the impressions of his mind,

unconsciously at first, perhaps unwillingly to himself--was likely to be

found. It was not an appointment: that would have alarmed her as well as

him; though he was not now so sure of that as he had been. Was it

possible that perhaps little Mary, innocent little girl as she seemed

and was, was playing for what were to her high stakes, and risking a

good deal in the spirit of the gamester? He did not allow this, and yet

it came in. But that did not in the least extenuate his guilt or explain

how his footsteps sought that way and no other in those early twilights,

now wan with the November chill. What game was he playing? Was it to

lose--everything--his head, his feet, his self-command in some whirl of

foolish feeling which was not passion or anything real at all? or was it

to win--in any shameful way? Certainly not that, certainly not that. He

said it over to himself raising his head, setting down his foot with a

stamp upon the ground. But while he made this vow to himself, once more

against the pale background of the willows and the dusk of the damp

fields that little figure rose, with its air of fictitious surprise.

"Oh, Mr Rushton! are you really walking this way again?" she said.

CHAPTER IV.

"But, my dear little Mary, your mother, who is a kind woman, will never

press you to marry him--if you don't like him," John said.

"Oh, Mr Rushton, you don't know what mother is. She says it's for my

good. They always think it is for our good when they go against us. She

says I'd be a deal better with a house of my own and a man to work for

me, instead of slaving in the bar drawing beer, and forced to laugh and

talk with all you gentlemen."

This was a new view of the matter to John. "Were you forced to laugh and

talk to us?" he said, with a sort of rueful chuckle. "That was perhaps a

pity on all sides."

"Oh, Mr Rushton!" cried Mary, "that's what mother says. It's not what I

think--don't you believe that."

"It might have been better, however, if you had thought it," John said.

"Oh, don't say so!" cried the girl. "Then I never should have known

anything better. When I think of you with your nice clean ways, and your

white shirtfronts, and your soft clothes--and Jim comes in all as he has

been working----"

Mary paused with a little shudder, thinking of that honourable dew of

labour which Scarfield had gently suggested might be washed off. It gave

John the most curious, whimsical sensation of universal misunderstanding

and general topsy-turvy to hear the girl's statement of that influence

which his friends had been discussing with so much more exalted ideas of

its power.

"But surely you could get him to wash?" he said, with a laugh.

"It ain't so easy as you think," said Mary. "When you're only keeping

company they'll do it, and keep themselves tidy; but when they are

married men!--then they think only of what's comfortable," the girl

said, with a sigh. Her head inclined almost upon John's shoulder as she

made her plaint, which was half ludicrous to him, not wholly touching as

she hoped. "Oh, Mr Rushton, how can I ever make up my mind to such a

fate?" Mary said.

"But, my little girl," he said, "you know there is always one way out of

it. You needn't marry at all--at least, I mean just at present," he

added, hastily.

"What, and 'ave mother nagging at me from morning to night?" said Mary,

hastily; and then in a softened tone, "I'd wait--ah, for twenty

years!--for one as I was really fond of," she said.

And then there was a pause, and they went on together arm in arm: and

the silence thrilled with meaning to poor little Mary, and perhaps to

the young man, too, half carried out by the tide with which he had been

so long dallying, half upon the dry ground to which he held with a sort

of desperation--"One foot on sea and one on shore." John was not of the

kind of those who are "to one thing constant never": yet he felt very

strongly the force of this statement of his position. He could not bear

to break her poor little heart, to fling her off into the arms of the

unwashed Jim; but what could he do? To marry the daughters of the masses

was not perhaps the way in which Oxford men could best influence those

masses for good--and yet why not so if all their theories were true? He

did not speak, though it was he who ought to have spoken. It was she

who, after that moment of thrilling suspense which again came to

nothing, took the word.

"I've been brought up too particular," she said. "We shouldn't be

perhaps when it's only to end in _that_. I've been brought up so that

I'm only fit for another spear."

"And what sphere is that, Mary?" He was a little amused, but he did,

there was no denying, press to his side a little slender hand that clung

to his arm.

"Oh, Mr Rushton, what you said yourself that time. Don't you remember,

just after you came up, you said, 'Would you like to marry a

gentleman?'" She began to cry softly in the dark, clinging to him. "Oh,

Mr Rushton, when you said that it was like opening the gate just a

little bit--to see heaven!"

"Did it look like that?" he said; his voice trembled a little. "It would

be a poor heaven, Mary. I fear it wouldn't be happy for you at all.

Think! You would have to give up your own people--your mother and

everything."

"Well," she said, "that's only like what's in the Bible--'Forget thine

own people and thy father's house.'"

"And _his_ people, don't you know, would be very angry, and perhaps

would not--be civil. It may be very bad, but that is what they would

do."

"Oh, Mr Rushton!" she cried, clinging closer: "but if he should have no

people--like--like--some gentlemen?" Mary did not venture yet to say

"like you."

"Everybody has some one," he said, hastily, offended by this

imputation, and feeling for the moment a strong impulse to push her

away--which, however, was impossible to him. "My dear, you wouldn't like

it," he said; "you wouldn't be a bit happy; you would be out of it on

both sides. And then, fancy if the man was poor--as most of us are when

we offend our people. You think marrying a gentleman means having plenty

of money, getting everything you wish, and nice dresses and a nice

house, and all that; but it would be far worse to be poor as a

gentleman's wife than as--than in a different sphere."

His taste revolted from saying "as Jim's wife," which were the natural

words. John was not æsthetic, but to speak of a girl, even the maid of

the inn, balancing thus between two men, was more than he could do.

"Oh, Mr Rushton," she said, again, "what should I mind being poor if--if

he loved me?" Her head touched his breast with a little soft sensation

as of a--dreadful thought, for which he loathed himself!--a little soft

cat rubbing itself against him. But yet it moved him all the same. Then

Mary said, very low, raising the whiteness of her face towards

him--"But, oh, Mr Rushton!--oh, _Jack_!--you're not poor!"

His heart gave a startled leap, and then subsided. He laughed aloud,

which broke the spell of the darkness and the whispering tones. "No,

Mary," he said; "I'm not poor. I'll give you a little _dot_ to make you

happy with Jim. You shall have enough to set up in a Barley Mow of your

own, where Jim, will make short work with the gentlemen. Have nothing

more to do with the gentlemen, Mary. Now, come, let's step out, and I'll

see you home."

"Oh, Jack!" she cried; "Jack!"--still clinging to his arm.

"No more of that, my dear little girl; no more of that. It would be a

great mistake for both of us. Play is very nice, but not when it goes

too far. Come, you shall have a nice little fortune, which will be far

better for you" (he remembered that she would not know what _dot_

meant); "and marry Jim, and make him wash, and keep him up to the mark.

He is a fine strong fellow; he looks very nice in his Sunday clothes.

Come, little Mary, look up and don't cry. Tell your mother she's to come

and see me to-morrow. We'll do it all honestly and above board. We've

nothing to be ashamed of, thank God! I'll always think of you as a sweet

little friend, very kind to me; and you'll think of me, Mary----"

"Oh, Mr Rushton!--oh, Mr Rushton!" she cried, drooping from his arm,

still hanging on tight: but with something different in the hold,

something--John felt it almost with a pang--which meant perhaps that she

had been able to keep her footing, too, in spite of the dragging of the

tide, which had almost, yet more nearly, carried himself away. Then Mary

had a sudden little access of pride, and let his arm drop. "If you think

I'm not good enough, after--after saying such things and making me

believe! But you're all the same; you are nothing but deceivers, as

mother says. Or if you think I care for your money! I want none of your

money!--as if it was got out of you for a breach of promise or something

to buy me off! _I_ go into court on a breach of promise to get money out

of you! I would rather die!"

"And there's no question of promise, breached or otherwise," said John.

"Here we are, Mary, in sight of your home; and you'll send your mother

to me to-morrow. Good-bye, my dear, and good-bye----"

"I won't!" she murmured, but it was under her breath. And John stood and

watched till she had reached the spot where the lights of the little

tavern shone out upon the road. Then he turned and walked quickly home.

He was not very comfortable, poor fellow. It had cost him something to

drop poor Mary's clinging hands, and something more to hurt her

feelings, which he sadly feared he must have done. It was brutal, he

felt. If it had been a lady to whom he had spoken so, what flogging

would have been too much for him? And yet, what else--what else could he

have done? Suppose he had married her instead? The suggestion filled him

with consternation. He said hurriedly to himself that it would not,

could not have made her happy. And yet he felt that he was ashamed of

himself as he marched home. He had played a poor part. It was heroic in

its way, if the truth were known; but of that wretched kind of heroism

which felt almost like shame. To treat a woman badly! He never thought,

whatever censure he might incur, that such a thing as that would ever be

said of him. And the _dot_, which had occurred to him on the spur of the

moment to quiet his conscience--no doubt it would be flung back to him

in his teeth, filling him with double shame.

He was still uncertain and excited about this when Mrs Brown, the

landlady of the Old Hatchet, appeared in his rooms next day. His heart

began to beat at the sight of her. He was no cynic. He thought it just

as likely as not, and almost hoped for the sake of some foolish

ideal--that she was coming to fling his promise back in his throat. But

Mrs Brown was very friendly, with no warlike ideas. "My Mary said as I

was to come to see you, sir," she said. "I doubt she's got some

nonsense in her head, for it don't sound likely: but something about a

present, as she said you was a-going to give her for her wedding--I'm

sure it's most wonderful kind of you, if it's true."

"It is quite true, Mrs Brown," said John, with a curious sick sensation,

something between disappointment and relief. The ground seemed somehow

cut from beneath his feet, leaving him faintly struggling for standing.

Neither indignation nor lamentation--neither the moan of injured love

nor the resentment of virtue assailed. A wedding-present! how much more

rational, how much better every way to call it that--but he made a gasp

for his breath before he went on. "Yes, Mrs Brown, it is quite true. I

admire your daughter very much. I am sure she is as good as gold."

"That she is, sir," cried the good woman, with energy; "and a girl had

need be that, I can tell you, to see all you gentlemen so familiar and

paying her such compliments and never to give way, not a step."

"It's very creditable, indeed," said John, with a smile, which was a

little rueful. He would have liked to laugh, but dared not--nor did he

feel at all like laughing if truth must be told. "I am going to leave

Oxford," he said, "and I'd like to show my appreciation. I hope you are

quite sure that the young man is worthy of her," he added, as he pulled

his cheque-book out of its drawer.

"Oh, sir, he's worthy of her if ever a man was--and they've kep' company

so long, ever since she was a little slip of a girl. I'm not a bit

afraid of that. Lord, Mr Rushton, you don't mean to say as this is all

for my Mary! A hundred pound! if it had been a matter of ten to buy her

her wedding-gown----Sir, sir," cried the good woman, getting up from her

chair, "there was nothing between you but good-day and good-night, for

the Lord's sake tell me that!"

"Never!" said John, the blood flushing to his face--"on my honour, and

as God hears me: nothing but friendship and admiration for as good a

little girl as there is in the world."

Mrs Brown went away well pleased, with the cheque folded up very small

in her purse. She drew her own conclusions--which were that John had

endeavoured to establish other relations and had been confounded by

Mary's goodness and sense of her own place. "He's been a-trying to carry

on," she said to herself, nodding her head, "and has just got as good a

settin' down as ever a gentleman had: or else he's asked her to marry

him, private-like, and she wouldn't. Oh, trust my Mary for that! She's

one as knows her place, and wouldn't consent to nothing of that sort:

but he 'as behaved 'andsome for a disappointed man, and I never will

hear a word against him," Mrs Brown said.

John stood at his window for some time after she had gone, with his

hands in his pockets, whistling loudly. He felt as if he were digging

his heels very deep into the soil to keep himself from doing something

or other which it would not have been very wise to do. The tide was very

strong, and if it once caught him, he did not know what he might do. Nor

did he know what he wanted to do. He was in that state in which Satan

finds some mischief still for every idle hand. He might have been led to

concoct a strike or preach revolution had that stream caught the foot

which he was digging into his carpet: or he might have done--worse. He

might very easily have been plunged into unmentionable things: or he

might have flung himself at the feet of the first pretty barmaid he

encountered, out of spite against this one who had--behaved so very

nicely. It was not a moment to stand and consider, even with the

advantage of digging out two round holes in the carpet. He snatched up

his rag of a gown and his college cap--(I will not pretend that he

usually wore these things out of doors; he did not: and had got into the

hands of proctors, and been disapproved of by Dons in consequence more

times than I can reckon. But when one goes to see the Warden one is

bound to academical costume.) He went there as fast as his feet could

carry him,--to do something quickly and at once was the only salvation

for him.

He was received by the Warden with a sort of grim kindness. "I perceive,

Mr Rushton," that dignitary said, "that you have done the work the

College required of you. It is done, but it is not at all well done, I

am sorry to say."

"I know it isn't well done, sir," said John, with a rueful recollection

of how hard it had been to do it at all.

"You have read your books flying--probably not in the vacation at

all--probably since you came up. And you have not understood very well

what you read. The work is done, however, and I'll say no more about how

it was done. Let me ask you, however, Mr Rushton, what you think is the

use of producing such an essay as that?"

"No use at all, sir," cried John. "I thought so all the time: more than

no use. It has only driven me half mad and disgusted you. It is fit for

nothing but to put in the fire. It should never have been written at

all."

"Do you suppose, then, that you come to the University to amuse

yourself, and that no work should be asked from you?"

"I don't amuse myself a bit," cried John. "And if you call that rot (I

beg your pardon, sir) work----Well, yes, I suppose it was work, it was

such a horrible task to me."

"Take care what you are saying, Mr Rushton: it's as easy for me to send

you down, remember, as to throw your essay into the fire."

"I wish you would, sir," cried John; "it would give me an excuse for

going away. It would give me satisfaction to see that rot burning, and

myself too almost, in one way or other. I thought once I'd paint a

little picture and bring you that instead."

"Oh, you can paint pictures?"

"I try," said John. He smiled a little to think that while the Warden

probably expected him to produce a daub like a schoolboy's or

schoolgirl's, there were people quite as good as the Warden in their way

who would have needed no further information than his name as to what he

could do. He who could produce nothing better than that very bad essay;

he----Well, he had heard a picture of his recognised as a "little

Rushton" once, by a man who knew. He laughed in a way which the Warden

did not understand and thought silly, and then he grew grave. "I think,

sir, on the whole," he said, suddenly, "I will take the advice you were

good enough to give me when I first came up."

"And what was that?" said the Warden, with a faint smile. "I believe I

have given you a great deal of good advice."

"It was--to go down," said John; and he felt a little attack of the

wounded vanity which that advice had roused in him as he repeated the

words, notwithstanding that he was making them his own.

"Oh," said the Warden, with a little surprise, "was that my advice?--and

why was it my advice?"

"It was chiefly, I think, because this miserable essay, which you think

disgraceful, and so do I, had not been written--the writing of it has

convinced me of the justice of what you said."

"But not me," said the Warden; "the essay is not very good, certainly"

(he had tacitly allowed it to be "rot," in its author's forcible

language, two minutes before); "still it is a piece of work creditably

gone through with, though against the grain. That does not count in

literature, perhaps, but it does in morals."

"I don't think so," said the audacious John: few were the men who had

dared to say so to the Warden before. "Bad work is bad work, sir, if it

were done with the best motive in the world."

The great man's face wavered a little between wrath and approval. There

was a spark of humour in him. "Thank you," he said, "for the

lesson"--while John's countenance blazed like fire.

"Oh, sir, I hope you don't think----"

"You need not apologise. I thought a week or two ago you had better go

down. I don't think so now. I need not stand upon my consistency. You

had better work out the problem for yourself."

John stood before him doubtfully, shaking his head. "The tides outside

are very strong," he said; "they catch a man's feet----"

"And do you know, my young Daniel," said the Warden, "any place where

the tides outside are not strong?"

All I know is that John Rushton did take his degree--a mere pass, of

course--and I don't know that it was of the least use to him. But he was

very strong in his sense that it was best not to be beaten, whatever the

battle might be.

THE HEIRS OF KELLIE.

AN EPISODE OF FAMILY HISTORY.

CHAPTER I.

Sir Walter Oliphant of Kellie in Fife was a man who had grown old amid

many perturbations of the State and of the house. In Mary's stormy and

troubled day he had been, as many were, not so certain in his beliefs,

either political or religious, as a person of so much consequence in his

county ought to have been. He had been the Queen's man, and he had been

the King's man, without, however, being either a time-server or a

turncoat. He was one of those who would have given his life to prove his

Queen's innocence, but who all the time could not but feel that this

would be a poor argument, and no evidence at all, against the cold chill

of doubt that lingered all the time even in his own heart. And his

reason was convinced of the advantages of the English alliance, and that

everything must be risked rather than King James's heirship,

notwithstanding the strong revolt in his heart against that which was so

likely to follow, the abandonment of Scotland, and ebbing away of her

dearly-bought glory and the pride of her independence, second to none.

But all the active struggles of life had died away from him when he sate

in his old hall, in the dreary years after the Court had gone away to

London, drawing so many with it; and the change had stricken to the

heart of Scotland, as wise men had known it would, although all the

country had cheered and shouted when their king assumed the English

crown, as if it had been by his prowess and for their greatness that he

had won that other kingdom. The land was subdued and troubled in these

days, yet did not venture to complain; for had not they desired that

which had come to pass? And the Kirk was troubled and uncertain too,

alarmed by threatenings of interference, though no great thing had yet

been attempted, and the ministers still had dominion more or less, and,

though many things were tolerated that had been condemned, still guided

most things their own way.

But all the affairs of the world had grown dim to Sir Walter Oliphant,

sitting in his little warm chamber--the room of panelled and carved oak,

which opened from the hall of Kellie Castle, as all the chief rooms did

and do to this day, without any chill of corridors or passages, but one

room out of another, after the ancient fashion. He sat by his fire, and

his mind was full of thoughts. He was an old man, but not so old in

years as in condition. His life, which had been a stirring one, was far

off from him, as if it had been a dream. There were times when it came

up into his mind like a tale that had been told, with which he had

little to do--the time when he was stout and strong, and rode out to

feast and to fight, and came back to hear the shouts and the sports of

his boys making the rafters ring. He thought of all these things

sometimes vaguely, as of things that had been; but at present his

occupation was chiefly to keep himself warm, and to think who should be

the heir of his Castle and his lands when he should be carried for the

last time down the winding stair. He was not much concerned about that,

any more than he was concerned for all that had happened to him in the

past: but the thought of who should have Kellie after him was still real

in his mind. That the natural heirs were gone had caused him bitter

sorrow in his day; but even that had grown far away and dim to him, and

all his life had shrunk into the routine of getting up from his bed and

going back to it--both tiresome processes--and swallowing the food that

had no taste, and sitting by the fire that had so little warmth. Only

this one thing held him, the great care of making up his mind who was to

be the heir of Kellie in the days when he should be there no more.

It was not that he was without kin or heirs-at-law. There was one even

at his own hearthstone who might well have ended all difficulties, being

its natural inheritress. Though Sir Walter was an old man, he had a

sister who was little more than a girl, though that is a strange thing

to think of. His father had lived long, and had made a foolish marriage

in his old age, and left behind him a child much younger than his

grandsons, and who was like a grandchild to her brother. She had grown

up in the house, the plaything of everybody, her right to her home never

doubted, yet without any position in it. When the others disappeared

Jean remained, and it might be that the father bereaved felt in the

bottom of his heart some grudge that she of whom no account was made

should continue when the loftier heads were laid low. But if this was in

his heart he did not betray it. She grew and blossomed out, and came to

her full height, which was not small, and was now of an age to be

considered the lady of the house. And no doubt, the old knight might

easily have given her to a fitting wooer, and thus found himself an heir

among the best blood of Fife; but of this he never thought, nor of Jean

his little sister as in any sense his successor. It angered him greatly

when Master Melville of Carnbee kirk and parish took it upon him to

speak a word to this effect. "Her, the heiress!" cried the old knight,

with a roar in his throat like a wounded lion. And he would not speak to

Master Melville again for many a day.

"And wha but her should be the heir?" said Mistress Marjory, the old

nurse, who had long been the housekeeper at Kellie, and to whom Jean was

as the light of her eyes. "Waes me for all the bonnie lads that are

away! and no an Oliphant left to keep up the honour of the old house.

But though she's but a lass she has the blood as well as any one, knight

or lord, that ever owned the name. And wherefore should she not get a

good man and raise up the race?"

"If she had a good man the morn the race she would raise up would be for

his house and no hers," said Neil Morison, who was the head of the other

section of the household, and in most things opposed to Mistress

Marjory. He gave forth a dry laugh, as was his wont, and added, "For all

so grand as ye are, the name never comes from the side of the distaff.

That's aye something to our side."

"There's times," said the housekeeper, "when nae less a thing than a

crown comes from that side--as is well kent in poor auld Scotland this

day."

"Ye may say that," said Neil, forced into sudden sympathy, "and if we

had vanquished thae English loons by our swords and our spears, as it is

written in Scripture, it would hae been the better way."

"Oh, hold your tongue with your spears and your swords! It would set ye

better, Maister Morison, to do what you can with our auld knight and

keep sore injustice out of his head--for who should have the lands after

him but his ain flesh and blood?"

"It would never do, it would never do," cried Neil. "A lass! that

couldna keep her ain heid, and muckle less the old Oliphant lands--that

are not what they used to be, lack-a-day, whoever was the heir."

"What are they colloguing about, the two great rulers of the house,"

said a young voice, bursting in as its owner did, with a sudden gush of

fresh air and the fragrance of the outdoor world, "putting each other in

mind of the greatness of the Oliphants, now that it's like the Flowers

of the Forest, and a' wede away."

"Mistress Jean! and a' in a confusion, your hair about your haffits, and

the lace torn off your riding-coat! What has happened to you? Will ye

never mind what a' the house tells you, that it sets you not, a lady

like you, to ride a powney about the roads like a farmer's lass."

"Or maybe worse things than that," said Neil, who had risen hurriedly to

his feet on the young lady's entrance, and shot this Parthian arrow at

her as he went away.

"I will shoot that auld carle some day if he looks at me so," she cried,

with a sudden gleam of anger, then laughed and clapped her hands, "with

my bow and arrows," she added, merrily. "We'll put him against the

castle wall, and pin him to't like that bonny saint in the old picture.

What's happened, said she? A great deal has happened. I have had a grand

adventure, Marjory, simple as I sit here."

"Oh, bairn, bairn!" cried the housekeeper, "you'll just break my heart."

"It's been broken so often, and aye mended again," said the girl. "Wait

till I tell you. I was rattling along on the Pittenweem road, my pony

and me, very well pleased with the fine day, and just singing to

ourselves, for it was too sunny to keep silence; when lo! I was aware of

a horse's hoofs coming pelting after me. I thought what you said, never

to mind, but just keep the road quietly and pay no attention. I would

not even give a look over my shoulder to see if it was one of the

Anstruthers or Roland Dishington, till I came to a corner and gave a

glint. And it was a muckle trooper on a muckle grey horse, not canny to

see, and no another soul within sight."

"Lord bless my soul! ane of the disbanded Greys!" cried Marjory, lifting

up her hands and eyes. "Oh, lassie, lassie! will ye never learn?"

"My heart was in my mouth," said Jean, whose eyes were dancing, however,

with excitement and triumph, "but I had to keep up my courage. I gave

the pony just a touch to speed her on--and you know she cannot thole

even a touch, she has such a spirit. And then there came a muckle

voice, as muckle as the man, calling to me, Hey, my bonnie lass! and

hey, my bonnie bird! The cannaillye! to use such words to me!"

Jean's eyes shone with a momentary gleam of rage and shame. "It is maybe

my fault," she said, "as ye are always telling me, to ride alone; but

who would I get to come behind? No Maister Morison, the major-domo, nor

Jamie Webster, that is everybody's man, nor Jaicque the groom. No, no;

there's nobody to follow Jean: so I must either bide in the house or

ride my lane."

"My darlin'! and what did he do?"

"Oh, no harm," cried the girl, laughing, "since here I am, and none the

worse but for the lace on my cape, that he gave a snatch at as he came

up thundering, till I thought it was a real charge of cavalry, and I

would be ridden down."

"Lassie! and how did ye escape? For gude sake dinna keep me in my

trouble."

"There is no need for trouble," said Jean, "since here you see me:

though I allow," she added, with a pleasure in working upon the old

lady's fears, "that a minute longer and I cannot tell what I would have

done; for he had gripped my cape in his hand, though the pony was just

flying, and the muckle grey horse thundering, and my heart bursting out

of my throat with fright and fury." She paused, half from the keenness

of the recollection and half maliciously, to pile up the agony.

"And then? and then?"

"Then?" said Jean, looking innocently into her old nurse's face. "Why,

then! there was just nothing more."

"Oh, bairn! you are enough to drive ten women out of their senses."

"Well," said Jean, "I will admit there were causes for it. But just at

that moment there came another galloping, just as muckle a horse and as

muckle a man, on the other side. And my man he dropped hold of my cape,

and tore the lace off it with his glove, as you see. And the pony, she

just set her feet to the ground as if she were riding a race, and the

new man and my man they faced each other. I'm thinking nothing happened.

I saw with that eye I have in the back of my head that they rode up to

each other awfu' civil, like two towers; and then the trooper he took

the turn to St Monance, and me I flew up the Carnbee road, and the grand

adventure was done. You can see I'm not a prin the worse, except my

riding-cape, and Kirsten must just sew on the lace again."

"And that was a'!" cried Mistress Marjory, relieved, but at the same

time a little disappointed to hear no more.

"All! was it not enough?" said Jean; "would you have had me assaulted on

the king's highway, and put in peril of my purse, that has nothing in

it, or maybe of my life, which has not very much----" Jean made a pause,

and then, looking up demurely, she said in very quiet tones, "No; it was

not all."

"Oh, my hinny,--you just play upon me as if I were a fiddle."

"You are much more like a harpsichord," said Jean, contemplating the

housekeeper's ample person reflectively. "Yon man after he had dispersed

the trooper never came rushing up as Roland Dishington or one of the

Ansters would have done, but just rode steady behind as if he had been

my servant." The word has or had two meanings, and probably the second

of these flashed over her memory, for she made an almost imperceptible

pause and reddened. "I was still a little feared: and what did I do but

head the pony for yon house you know, of Over-Kellie, where you never

would let me go----"

"And then?" cried Mistress Marjory again, breathless.

"Well, they came fleeing out, and he, he came riding in. And it was who

would be the most concerned, and was I hurt and was I frightened, and

would I bide and rest? The Leddy--or is she the Gudewife?--for I could

not tell----"

"Some calls her the one and some the other," said Marjory, shortly.

"Never you mind. You'll be telling me now the man that came up

and--saved ye was----"

"That is just it," said Jean, "and if you'll tell nobody, Marjory, I'll

just whisper in your ear--he's a bonnie lad."

"Mistress Jean!" cried the housekeeper in consternation.

"Well! say he's just a country fellow, and no grand cock to his hat, nor

lace on his coat: I am not saying he's a grand gentleman. But I have a

pair of sharp eyes in my head,--you are always saying that,--and I

cannot but see what's set before them. He is a bonnie lad; and that is

just as true as all the rest."

"What do you call a' the rest?"

"You know as well as I do; or maybe you know better," said Jean, with a

little indignation; "because he is Peter Oliphant, and because he is the

next of kin, that's not to say that he is not a bonnie lad!"

"It might be a good reason, Mistress Jean, for you kenning naething

about him, and no going out of your way to make acquaintance with

him----"

"Me go out of my way to make acquaintance with him! Neither him nor any

man, if it were a prince or a king! It was he that came out of his way

to protect a lass he knew nothing of when he saw she was in need. Maybe

you would have thought it better had he left me to the trooper?" said

the girl, with much indignation.

"Oh, no that, no that," said the old woman; "but it would have been

better you had not put yourself in the way of wanting protection, my

bonnie leddy--no from him nor from any man!" she said.

"You forget who you are speaking to," cried Mistress Jean, with quick

anger, flinging away. But she came back next minute to fling her arms

round her old nurse's neck. "And that's true," she said; "I was just

thinking so mysel'."

CHAPTER II.

While this was going on, Sir Walter was sitting in his warm panelled

chamber, pondering by the side of the fire. His old Castle, which was

not one of the famous strongholds of the time, but yet an ancient house

dating far back into the mist of ages, and standing four-square to all

the winds that blew, a house that time could scarcely wear more than the

rocks, would soon be a desolate and masterless house. Since the days of

Bruce the Oliphants had been there, and the first lord of Kellie had

good King Robert's blood in his veins. But now there was no one to come

after him in the old home of his race. The gloom of that consciousness

had settled down upon his mind, and filled him with an immense and

indescribable darkness in which he went tottering, seeking for something

to replace what was lost, though by moments he was not very clear as to

what it was that was lost, which made it necessary for him to grope in

the dark and seek that substitute. And his thoughts were very slow,

wandering, and confused, though they always came back with unbroken

persistency to the one point. Who should have Kellie after him? Who

would replace the heirs who were no more? This had been the

preoccupation of many years; it almost seemed as if all his life he had

been thinking of it. His own active days had vanished away, and all the

adventures and troubles that had filled his house with rejoicing and

with wailing. Sometimes while he sat musing on that one sole question he

would be surprised by a recollection of himself, as in the days when he

rode in Queen Mary's train, or those in which he hung about the

ante-chambers at St James's, half proud to feel himself one of the new

masters there, half furious to see the dark looks which the Southern

lords threw upon King James's train. Was that himself? or one of the

former Oliphants who held a larger train at Kellie? or perhaps one of

the young ones--the lads, the----, those who ought to have been here to

receive Kellie from his hands. Their faces would sometimes flash out

from his memory too. Who were they, old heirs of Kellie slain in the

wars, or lost in the wildering world, never coming back to claim their

heritage? And who was to have it now? Who would keep it safe, and guard

all its rights and keep up the auld name? On this subject his thoughts

would clear, his mind retained its force. It was the one clear point in

the misty universe of dreams that surrounded the old man.

Almost his only visitors were the clergymen of the two neighbouring

parishes, each of which claimed Kellie Castle as part of its own. He

retained enough of his natural keenness to perceive that each of them

took a different side in this great question, and sometimes to play upon

their contradictions with something of the pleasure which the quarrels

of priests and women between themselves so often afford to a man of the

world. The difference between them gave him a vague amusement, or

something at least as like amusement as he was capable of. Master

Melville of Carnbee was a Reformation minister who had known John Knox,

and who, though of a much milder temper, was yet very strong as to his

duty of speaking in season and out of season, and letting no man avoid

or mistake his duty without full warning of it; but Sir John Low at

Pittenweem was no better than a mass priest the country folk said, and

loved the great, and to speak smooth things, flattering the old laird

and supporting him in taking his own way. Sir Walter listened to what

they said on both sides, but he was little moved by their arguments.

What he was really doing while he seemed to be listening was slowly

settling upon his own plans, and deciding for himself while they talked,

which neither of them was at all unwilling to do. It was Mr Melville who

was his visitor the day after the incident in the last chapter, a grave

man of gentle manners, with a black velvet cap upon a bald head.

"What are ye saying?" said Sir Walter. "Reason gude--ay, I've reason

gude for all I say to you. It's no fit that an auld race should die out

of the land."

"And yet," said the other, in the heat of argument, "if it's so

ordained, it's ill striving with the Will aboon. But ye have heirs in

plenty at your hand, and little danger of your name. How often must I

be telling ye, Sir Walter Oliphant, there is your ain father's daughter,

your ain flesh and blood, the one that has the best right? Where would

ye go furder than your ain ingleside? Who could be so near to you? and

young and likely and one to raise up heirs--always if it be the

Almichty's will----"

"Who's that," said the old knight. "Jean! a bit lassie! how often have I

tellt you, minister? just as often as you have tellt me. What would I do

with a lassie in my seat, that could neither keep the house nor keep her

head, a thing with neither might nor right? Na! that will not do for

me."

"She would get a man," said Mr Melville.

"Ay, she would get a man! little doubt of that: and my auld lands would

be sweepit up into lands that march with mine, and there would be an

Anster of Kellie, or a Dishington, or a Lindsay, or the Lord knows what.

No! if I have said it once I have said it a hundred times, nae lass

shall reign and rule in my auld house."

"Well-a-well, well-a-well! if ye say so," said the minister, "I have no

certain teaching about the heirship of a woman, though the daughters of

Zelophehad had a portion with their brethren, as we read in the Book of

Numbers; but I would not force the word of the Lord, and that might be a

special case. But ye know well, Sir Walter, as well as I do, that

failing her, there's one of your blood no far from your door that is as

weel capable of keeping his ain house and his ain head as Arthur and a'

his knights. And that is Peter Oliphant of Over-Kellie----"

"Pah!" the old man spat vehemently into the smouldering fire. "I will

have none of him--a country clown--a callant from the plough. And what

was his father but a clown before him, with no more spirit of a

gentleman than Neil, my man?"

"Neil," said the minister, "is a decent man now, whatever he may have

been; but would pocket a crown-piece and hold his tongue if any grand

gallant had need of him: whereas your cousin of Over-Kellie, Sir

Walter----"

"Cousin! a hundred times removed!"

"Is it you I hear shaming your own blood?" said the other. "Me, I am

maybe a hundred times, as you say, or more, removed from the head of my

name; but I have yet to learn," the minister added, raising his head,

"that the strain of the younger is less pure than the strain of the

elder when it flows in an unbroken and lawful line."

"I ken, and we all ken," said Sir Walter, subdued, "minister, that

there's no better name in Fife----"

"I am standing upon no such vanities," said Melville. "Your cousin has

neither been at the College nor at the Court, Sir Walter, and maybe as

well for him in these evil days; but he's a handy man at his weapons,

and a lad that kens his own mind. There's no man in the parish better

kent or better liked, or more a man of his word. I ken but little of my

Lord Oliphant, or of his house; but well I wot there is not a better in

it than Pate, or one that can master him, or daunton him, among the best

of his name."

"Ye mean the lad to wed one of your lasses, that you are so hot upon

him," Sir Walter said.

"I ken well," said Melville, "what lass I want him to wed; but she is

none of mine. Will you see the young man, Sir Walter, and judge for

yourself? I will bring him to you in my hand, for he has always been a

good lad to his minister; though he would not set foot over your

door-stane for other motives."

"And wherefore," cried Sir Walter, "would this farmer-lad no set foot

over my door-stane?"

"For an evil reason," said the minister; "for pride, and a high head

that would not stoop before any man but the king."

"Ha! ha!" cried the old knight; "bring me this clown with his high head

that would not stoop under the door of Kellie Castle. Bigger men than

him have entered at that door--ay, and stooped too, and even bitten the

dust before them that owned it. He's then a deevil of pride and conceit,

this yeoman lad of yours."

"Ye are right, and again right, Sir Walter," said the minister, gravely,

"when you say that pride, the pride that you, and even myself, that

should ken better, take in the vanity of a name--is a devilish thing."