satisfied all the
wounds which the dignity of the Leslies had ever received.

This letter of apology ended with a hearty request that Randall would
come and spend a few days with his son. Frank's epistle was to the same
purport, only more Etonian and less legible.

It was some days before Randall's replies to these epistles were
received. The replies bore the address of a village near London, and
stated that the writer was now reading with a tutor preparatory to
entrance at Oxford, and could not, therefore, accept the invitation
extended to him.

For the rest, Randall expressed himself with good sense, though not with
much generosity, he excused his participation in the vulgarity of such a
conflict by a bitter but short allusion to the obstinacy and ignorance
of the village boor; and did not do what you, my kind reader, certainly
would have done under similar circumstances--viz. intercede in behalf of
a brave and unfortunate antagonist. Most of us like a foe better after
we have fought him--that is, if we are the conquering party; this was
not the case with Randal Leslie. There, so far as the Etonian was
concerned, the matter rested. And the Squire, irritated that he could
not repair whatever wrong that young gentleman had sustained, no longer
felt a pang of regret as he passed by Mrs. Fairfield's deserted cottage.

CHAPTER XVI.

Lenny Fairfield continued to give great satisfaction to his new
employers, and to profit in many respects by the familiar kindness with
which he was treated. Riccabocca, who valued himself on penetrating into
character, had from the first seen that much stuff of no common quality
and texture was to be found in the disposition and mind of the English
village boy. On farther acquaintance, he perceived that, under a
child's innocent simplicity, there were the workings of an acuteness
that required but development and direction. He ascertained that the
pattern boy's progress at the village school proceeded from something
more than mechanical docility and readiness of comprehension. Lenny had
a keen thirst for knowledge, and through all the disadvantages of and
circumstance, there were the indications of that natural genius which
converts disadvantages themselves into stimulants. Still, with the germs
of good qualities lay the embryos of those which, difficult to separate,
and hard to destroy, often mar the produce of the soil. With a
remarkable and generous pride in self-repute, there was so