s steel. What would they think if
they heard you."

"I think, Robert," he said, disregarding his daughter's protest, "that
I will have a drop, just the very smallest possible drop, of brandy. A
mere thimbleful will do; but I rather think I have caught cold during
the snowstorm to-day."

Robert went on sketching stolidly in his folding book, but Laura looked
up from her work.

"I'm afraid there is nothing in the house, father," she said.

"Laura! Laura!" He shook his head as one more in sorrow than in anger.
"You are no longer a girl, Laura; you are a woman, the manager of a
household, Laura. We trust in you. We look entirely towards you. And yet
you leave your poor brother Robert without any brandy, to say nothing of
me, your father. Good heavens, Laura! what would your mother have said?
Think of accidents, think of sudden illness, think of apoplectic fits,
Laura. It is a very grave res--a very grave response--a very great risk
that you run."

"I hardly touch the stuff," said Robert curtly; "Laura need not provide
any for me."

"As a medicine it is invaluable, Robert. To be used, you understand, and
not to be abused. That's the whole secret of it. But I'll step down to
the Three Pigeons for half an hour."

"My dear father," cried the young man "you surely are not going out upon
such a night. If you must have brandy could I not send Sarah for some?
Please let me send Sarah; or I would go myself, or--"

Pip! came a little paper pellet from his sister's chair on to the
sketch-book in front of him! He unrolled it and held it to the light.

"For Heaven's sake let him go!" was scrawled across it.

"Well, in any case, wrap yourself up warm," he continued, laying bare
his sudden change of front with a masculine clumsiness which horrified
his sister. "Perhaps it is not so cold as it looks. You can't lose your
way, that is one blessing. And it is not more than a hundred yards."

With many mumbles and grumbles at his daughter's want of foresight, old
McIntyre struggled into his great-coat and wrapped his scarf round his
long thin throat. A sharp gust of cold wind made the lamps flicker as he
threw open the hall-door. His two children listened to the dull fall of
his footsteps as he slowly picked out the winding garden path.

"He gets worse--he becomes intolerable," said Robert at last. "We should
not have let him out; he may make a public exhibition of himself."

"But it's Hector's last night," pleaded Laura. "It wo