o Mr. Home's presence.

"Sir," he asked, "what is my sentence?"

The father looked at him: the daughter kept her face hid.

"Well, Bretton," said Mr. Home, "you have given me the usual reward of
hospitality. I entertained you; you have taken my best. I was always
glad to see you; you were glad to see the one precious thing I had. You
spoke me fair; and, meantime, I will not say you _robbed_ me, but I am
bereaved, and what I have lost, _you_, it seems, have won."

"Sir, I cannot repent."

"Repent! Not you! You triumph, no doubt: John Graham, you descended
partly from a Highlander and a chief, and there is a trace of the Celt
in all you look, speak, and think. You have his cunning and his charm.
The red--(Well then, Polly, the _fair_) hair, the tongue of guile, and
brain of wile, are all come down by inheritance."

"Sir, I _feel_ honest enough," said Graham; and a genuine English blush
covered his face with its warm witness of sincerity. "And yet," he
added, "I won't deny that in some respects you accuse me justly. In
your presence I have always had a thought which I dared not show you. I
did truly regard you as the possessor of the most valuable thing the
world owns for me. I wished for it: I tried for it. Sir, I ask for it
now."

"John, you ask much."

"Very much, sir. It must come from your generosity, as a gift; from
your justice, as a reward. I can never earn it."

"Ay! Listen to the Highland tongue!" said Mr. Home. "Look up, Polly!
Answer this 'braw wooer;' send him away!"

She looked up. She shyly glanced at her eager, handsome suitor. She
gazed tenderly on her furrowed sire.

"Papa, I love you both," said she; "I can take care of you both. I need
not send Graham away--he can live here; he will be no inconvenience,"
she alleged with that simplicity of phraseology which at times was wont
to make both her father and Graham smile. They smiled now.

"He will be a prodigious inconvenience to me," still persisted Mr.
Home. "I don't want him, Polly, he is too tall; he is in my way. Tell
him to march."

"You will get used to him, papa. He seemed exceedingly tall to me at
first--like a tower when I looked up at him; but, on the whole, I would
rather not have him otherwise."

"I object to him altogether, Polly; I can do without a son-in-law. I
should never have requested the best man in the land to stand to me in
that relation. Dismiss this gentleman."

"But he has known you so long, papa, and suits you so