ease understand this once for all."

"Yes, father?"

"Never mention the names of the Mackhais again."

CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR.

RESTITUTION.

Time glided on, and Mr Andrew Blande's plans did not seem to turn out
quite as he wished. The customary legal proceedings were got through,
and he became full possessor of Dunroe, with the right, as the deeds
said, to enjoy these rights. But he was a very old man, one who had
married late in life, to find that he had made a mistake, for the
marriage was hurried on by the lady's friends on account of his wealth,
and the lady who became his wife lived a somewhat sad life, and died
when her son Max was ten years old.

To make Max happy, his father had been in the habit of letting him lead
a sedentary life, and of telling him how rich he would some day be, and
had gone on saving and hoarding, and gaining possession of estate after
estate.

But when he had obtained Dunroe, he did not enjoy it. He went down once
to stay there, but he never did so again; and finding, in spite of all
he could say, that Max would not enjoy it either, and seemed to have a
determined objection to become a Scottish country gentleman, he placed
the estate in the hands of his agent to let, and it was not long before
a tenant was found for the beautiful old place.

As the years glided on, Max went to college, and kept up a regular
correspondence with Kenneth, who, as soon as it could be managed after
their leaving Dunroe, went to Sandhurst, his father contenting himself
with quiet chambers in town near his club.

But Max and Kenneth did not meet; the troubles at Dunroe seemed to keep
them separate. Still, there was always a feeling on the part of both
that some day they would be the best of friends once more, and the money
question be something that was as good as forgotten.

One day, Max, who had six months previously been summoned to London on
very important business, received a letter which had followed him from
Cambridge to the dingy old house in Lincoln's Inn.

The young man's face flushed as he opened and read the long epistle,
whose purport was that The Mackhai had gone to Baden-Baden for a couple
of months, that the writer was alone at his father's chambers, and
asking Max to renew some of their old friendly feeling by coming to stay
with him for a few days.

Six months before, Max would have declined at once, but now he wrote
accepting the invitation with alacrity.

It was for the