certain danger that gave them their zest. In these he
admitted no man to be his superior; and in this very conscious strength
lay the pride that sustained him. Compel him, however, to live in
another fashion, surround him with the responsibilities of station, and
the demands of certain ceremonies, and he would be wretched. "Perhaps
she saw all that," muttered he to himself. "With that marvellous
quickness of hers, who knows if she might not have foreseen how unsuited
I was to all habits but my own wayward careless ones? And though I hope
I shall always be a gentleman, in truth there are some forms of the
condition that puzzle me sorely.

"And, after all, have I not my dear mother to look after and make happy?
and what a charm it will give to life to see her surrounded with the
little objects she loved and cared for! What a garden she shall have!"
Climate and soil, to be sure, were stiff adversaries to conquer,
but money and skill could fight them; and that school for the little
girls--the fishermen's daughters--that she was always planning, and
always wondering Sir Arthur Lyle had never thought of, she should have
it now, and a pretty building, too, it should be. He knew the very spot
to suit it, and how beautiful he would make their own little cottage,
if his mother should still desire to live there. Not that he thought of
this positively with perfect calm and indifference. To live so near
the Lyles, and live estranged from them, would be a great source of
unpleasantness, and yet how could he possibly renew his relations there,
now that all was over between Alice and himself? "Ah," thought he, at
last, "the world would stand still if it had to wait for stupid fellows
like me to solve its difficulties. I must just let events happen, and do
the best I can when they confront me;" and then mother would be there,
mother would counsel and advise him; mother would warn him of this, and
reconcile him to that; and so he was of good cheer as to the future,
though there were things in the present that pressed him sorely.

It was about an hour after dark of a starry, sharp October evening, that
the jaunting-car on which he travelled drove up to the spot where the
little pathway turned off to the cottage, and Jeanie was there with her
lantern waiting for him.

"You've no a' that luggage, Maister Tony?" cried she, as the man
deposited the fourth trunk on the road.

"How's my mother?" asked he, impatiently,--"is she well?"

"Why