st now.

Bates sat subjecting all he knew of Alec to a process of consideration.
The result was not a guess; it was not in him to hazard anything, even a
guess.

"What does your brother do?"

"Clergyman, and he has a school."

"Where?"

"Chellaston, on the Grand Trunk."

"Never heard of it. Is it a growing place?"

"It's thriving along now. It was just right for my business."

"Did the clergyman think your business was wrong?"

The young man laughed as a man laughs who knows the answer to an amusing
riddle and sees his neighbour's mental floundering. "He admits that it's
an honest and respectable line of life."

"Did ye give in, then?"

"I took a year to think over it. I'm doing that now."

"Thinking?"

"Yes."

"I've not observed ye spending much time in meditation."

The young man looked off across the basin of the frozen lake. What is
more changeful than the blue of the sky? Today the far firmament looked
opaque, an even, light blue, as if it were made of painted china. The
blue of Alec Trenholme's eyes was very much like the sky; sometimes it
was deep and dark, sometimes it was a shadowy grey, sometimes it was
hard and metallic. A woman having to deal with him would probably have
imagined that something of his inward mood was to be read in these
changes; but, indeed, they were owing solely to those causes which
change the face of the sky--degrees of light and the position of that
light. As for Bates, he did not even know that his companion had blue
eyes; he only knew in a general way that he was a strong, good-looking
fellow, whose figure, even under the bulgy shapes of multiplied
garments, managed to give suggestion of that indefinite thing we call
style. He himself felt rather thinner, weaker, more rusty in knowledge
of the world, more shapeless as to apparel, than he would have done had
he sat alone.

After a minute or two he said, "What's your trade?"

Trenholme, sitting there in the clear light, would have blushed as he
answered had his face not been too much weathered to admit of change of
colour. He went through that momentary change of feeling that we connect
with blushes. He had been perfectly conscious that this question was
coming, and perfectly conscious, too, that when he answered it he would
fall in Bates's estimation, that his prestige would be gone. He thought
he did not mind it, but he did.

"Butcher," he said.

"Ye're not in earnest?" said Bates, with animosity.

"Upon my