showing him how grateful he was for his
protection and guidance. Time enough for his father, and time enough
for Kate, for that matter, should the clouds ever lift--as lift they
would--but his Uncle George first, last, and all the time.

And St. George appreciated it to the full. Never had he been so happy.
Even the men at the club saw the change, and declared he looked ten
years younger--fifteen really, when Harry was with him, which was
almost always the case--for out of consideration for St. George and the
peculiar circumstances surrounding the boy's condition, his birth and
station, and the pride they took in his pluck, the committee had at
last stretched the rule and had sent Mr. Henry Gilmor Rutter of
Moorlands--with special reference to "Moorlands," a perennial invitation
entitling him to the club's privileges--a card which never expired
because it was systematically renewed.

And it was not only at the club that the two men were inseparable. In
their morning walks, the four dogs in full cry; at the races; in the
hunts, when some one loaned both Harry and his uncle a mount--at night,
when Todd passed silently out, leaving all the bottled comforts behind
him--followed by--"Ah, Harry!--and you won't join me? That's right, my
son--and I won't ask you," the two passed almost every hour of the day
and night together. It was host one minute and father the next.

And this life, if the truth be told, did not greatly vary from the one
the boy had always led, except that there was more of town and less of
country in it than he had heretofore been accustomed to. The freedom
from all care--for the colonel had trained Harry to neither business nor
profession--was the same, and so was the right to employ his time as he
pleased. At Moorlands he was busy over his horses and dogs, his sporting
outfits, riding to hounds, cock-fights--common in those days--and, of
course, assisting his father and mother in dispensing the hospitality of
the house. In Kennedy Square St. George was his chief occupation, and
of the two he liked the last the best. What he had hungered for all his
life was sympathy and companionship, and this his father had never given
him; nor had he known what it was since his college days. Advice, money,
horses, clothes, guns--anything and everything which might, could, or
would redound to the glory of the Rutters had been his for the asking,
but the touch of a warm hand, the thrill in the voice when he had done
so