honest open faces, the younger ruddy and sunburnt, the
elder thinner and more intellectual--and they were so much the same size
that the advantage of age was always supposed to be on the side of
Stephen, though he was really the junior by nearly a year. Both were
sad and grave, and the eyes and cheeks of Stephen showed traces of
recent floods of tears, though there was more settled dejection on the
countenance of his brother.

"Ay, Spring," said the lad, "'tis winter with thee now. A poor old
rogue! Did the new housewife talk of a halter because he showed his
teeth when her ill-nurtured brat wanted to ride on him? Nay, old
Spring, thou shalt share thy master's fortunes, changed though they be.
Oh, father! father! didst thou guess how it would be with thy boys!"
And throwing himself on the grass, he hid his face against the dog and
sobbed.

"Come, Stephen, Stephen; 'tis time to play the man! What are we to do
out in the world if you weep and wail?"

"She might have let us stay for the month's mind," was heard from
Stephen.

"Ay, and though we might be more glad to go, we might carry bitterer
thoughts along with us. Better be done with it at once, say I."

"There would still be the Forest! And I saw the moorhen sitting yester
eve! And the wild ducklings are out on the pool, and the woods are full
of song. Oh! Ambrose! I never knew how hard it is to part--"

"Nay, now, Steve, where be all your plots for bravery? You always meant
to seek your fortune--not bide here like an acorn for ever."

"I never thought to be thrust forth the very day of our poor father's
burial, by a shrewish town-bred vixen, and a base narrow-souled--"

"Hist! hist!" said the more prudent Ambrose.

"Let him hear who will! He cannot do worse for us than he has done!
All the Forest will cry shame on him for a mean-hearted skinflint to
turn his brothers from their home, ere their father and his, be cold in
his grave," cried Stephen, clenching the grass with his hands, in his
passionate sense of wrong.

"That's womanish," said Ambrose.

"Who'll be the woman when the time comes for drawing cold steel?" cried
Stephen, sitting up.

At that moment there came through the porch a man, a few years over
thirty, likewise in mourning, with a paler, sharper countenance than the
brothers, and an uncomfortable pleading expression of self-
justification.

"How now, lads!" he said, "what means this? You have taken the matter
too hastily.