onths short of thirteen. Casual acquaintances often remarked that there
was a great likeness between them; and, indeed, both were
pleasant-looking lads with somewhat fair complexions, their brown hair
having a tendency to stand up in a tuft on the forehead, while both had
grey eyes, and square foreheads. Mrs. Troutbeck was always ready to
assent to the remark as to their likeness, but would gently qualify it
by saying that it did not strike her so much as it did other people.

"Their dispositions are quite different," she said, "and knowing them as
I do, I see the same differences in their faces."

Any close observer would, indeed, have recognized it at once. Both faces
were pleasant, but while Julian's wore an expression of easy good
temper, and a willingness to please and to be pleased, there was a lack
of power and will in the lower part of the face; there was neither
firmness in the mouth nor determination in the chin. Upon the other
hand, except when smiling or talking, Frank's lips were closely pressed
together, and his square chin and jaw clearly indicated firmness of will
and tenacity of purpose. Julian was his aunt's favourite, and was one of
the most popular boys at his school. He liked being popular, and as long
as it did not put him to any great personal trouble was always ready to
fall in with any proposal, to take part in every prank, to lend or give
money if he had it in his pocket, to sympathize with any one in
trouble.

"He has the most generous disposition of any boy I ever saw!" his aunt
would frequently declare. "He's always ready to oblige. No matter what
he is doing, he will throw it aside in a moment if I want anything done,
or ask him to go on an errand into the town. Frank is very nice, he is
very kind and all that sort of thing, but he goes his own way more, and
I don't find him quite so willing to oblige as Julian; but then, of
course, he is much younger, and one can't expect a boy of twelve to be
as thoughtful to an old woman as a young fellow of nearly seventeen."

As time went on the difference in their characters became still more
marked. Julian had left school a year after his father's death, and had
since been doing nothing in particular. He had talked vaguely of going
into the army, and his father's long services would have given him a
claim for a commission had he decided upon writing to ask for one, but
Julian could never bring himself to decide upon anything. Had there been
an old