who were all old soldiers--saluted him, and his method of
responding, would have been convincing to the dullest. A few years
before the event just narrated Captain Somerton had belonged to a crack
hussar regiment. But, his father dying, he had resigned his commission,
in order that he might be able to manage in person the property which
had come into his possession.

Then it was that his first wife had died, leaving him with a child of
five. Three years later he had married a widow, who also had a boy.

It had been a sad, indeed a fatal, mistake. His second wife was
unsuitable in every respect, and was the very last woman he should have
selected. She had no sympathy with him, spent much of her time amongst
smart people in London, and when at home invariably upset the house, and
caused her husband displeasure by her treatment of his boy. Indeed, as
time passed, she seemed to take a positive delight in speaking sharply
to Jack, knowing well that by doing so she caused Captain Somerton pain
and annoyance.

And Jack--poor little fellow!--though at first he had, boy-like, quickly
forgotten his scoldings, was now really in terror of his unloving
stepmother.

People who knew the Somertons, and were callers at Frampton Grange, soon
learnt what kind of a woman its new mistress was. Though outwardly all
that was pleasant and entertaining to them, they quickly gauged her
character, and knew her to be a source of discord in a house which was,
before her arrival there, one of the happiest in the land. They summed
her up, noticed the icy looks with which she often greeted Jack, and
contrasted them with the tender embraces with which she almost smothered
her own son.

Then they discussed the subject by other firesides till it was almost
threadbare, and came to the conclusion that jealousy of Jack's undoubted
superior qualities and good looks was the main cause of her unkind
treatment of him.

And below stairs, in the kitchen of Frampton Grange, the captain's
servants put their heads together many a time, with the result that all
sympathised secretly with their master and his son, and cordially
disliked the new mistress and the peevish and ill-mannered cub belonging
to her.

Even as Captain Somerton and his wife were exchanging their views in the
study above, old Banks, the butler, who had been with the Somertons for
many years, was holding forth with unusual vehemence to the cook and
maids below.

"I calls it just a