ing it out with him," remarked Frank.

"Just you leave it all to me. I'm a match for Andrew any day."

It would have been well if Mr. Walkingshaw had "touched wood" as he made
this vaunt; but at that moment his confidence was so serene that he felt
master of any emergency conceivable by man.

"Andrew's not the mate for Ellen," he said presently. "The young are for
each other, Frank; that's the law of nature."

He smiled to himself.

"I learnt that this afternoon. By Jove, what a pretty girl Ellen is!"

And then again his young heart remembered the sympathetic widow, and he
stopped smiling.

CHAPTER III

The backbone of our country is that band of civic heroes who, when
turmoil rages and disaster threatens, are the last men to desert the
desk. In this glorious company Andrew Walkingshaw was numbered. His
father might tear up and down the country like a disreputable whirlwind,
his widowed relative fume and plot, his sister disgrace the family by an
unsuitable engagement, his betrothed leave his affectionate letters
unanswered, his own soul writhe in decorous anguish at these calamities,
but Casabianca himself was not more faithful to his post than he. It is
true, indeed, that he had once tried the alternative policy and chased
that cyclone, but he had taken to heart the lesson, and thenceforth
closed his ears to disquieting rumors, his eyes to distressing symptoms,
and went about his work, if possible, more conscientiously than ever.
That was the proper way to get through business--conscientiously. He was
sickened with the people (clients of some eminence, but evidently with a
screw loose) who kept deferring their more important concerns till the
senior partner returned with his infernal headlong methods. Let them
wait if they liked! Let them take their business elsewhere if they were
such fools! Deliberately and calmly _he_ had washed his hands of his
senior partner. That was the end of him so far as he was concerned, said
Andrew to himself. But alas! you may wash your hands of a tornado, but
supposing it retorts by blowing down your house?

It was about nine in the evening, and he sat by himself, severely
scrutinizing the pleadings drawn up by his clerk for a forthcoming case,
connected with so large a sum of money that it was a pleasure merely to
read the imposing figures. The ladies were upstairs in the drawing-room.
So long as Mrs. Dunbar was among them, he was not likely to show his
face _there_.