world beyond
you, is entrancing. It is the life to make a poet!"

"Or a king!" thought Donal. "But the earl would have made a
discontented shepherd!"

The man who is not content where he is, would never have been content
somewhere else, though he might have complained less.

"Take another glass of wine, Mr. Grant," said his lordship, filling his
own from the other decanter. "Try this; I believe you will like it
better."

"In truth, my lord," answered Donal, "I have drunk so little wine that
I do not know one sort from another."

"You know whisky better, I daresay! Would you like some now? Touch the
bell behind you."

"No, thank you, my lord; I know as little about whisky: my mother would
never let us even taste it, and I have never tasted it."

"A new taste is a gain to the being."

"I suspect, however, a new appetite can only be a loss."

As he said this, Donal, half mechanically, filled a glass from the
decanter his host had pushed towards him.

"I should like you, though," resumed his lordship, after a short pause,
"to keep your eyes open to the fact that Davie must do something for
himself. You would then be able to let me know by and by what you think
him fit for!"

"I will with pleasure, my lord. Tastes may not be infallible guides to
what is fit for us, but they may lead us to the knowledge of what we
are fit for."

"Extremely well said!" returned the earl.

I do not think he understood in the least what Donal meant.

"Shall I try how he takes to trigonometry? He might care to learn
land-surveying! Gentlemen now, not unfrequently, take charge of the
properties of their more favoured relatives. There is Mr. Graeme, your
own factor, my lord--a relative, I understand!"

"A distant one," answered his lordship with marked coldness, "--the
degree of relationship hardly to be counted."

"In the lowlands, my lord, you do not care to count kin as we do in the
highlands! My heart warms to the word kinsman."

"You have not found kinship so awkward as I, possibly!" said his
lordship, with a watery smile. "The man in humble position may allow
the claim of kin to any extent: he has nothing, therefore nothing can
be taken from him! But the man who has would be the poorest of the clan
if he gave to every needy relation."

"I never knew the man so poor," answered Donal, "that he had nothing to
give. But the things of the poor are hardly to the purpose of the
predatory relative."

"'Predatory relative!'-