et into a habit of steady
loading."

"Perhaps I will take a turn,--just to find out how I feel in the
knickerbockers. At what time shall I dine if you don't come back?"

"I shall certainly be here to dinner," said Frank, "unless the pony
fails me or I get lost on the mountain." Then he started, and Herriot
at once went to work on Stone and Toddy, with a pipe in his mouth. He
had travelled all night, and it is hardly necessary to say that in
five minutes he was fast asleep.

So also had Frank travelled all night, but the pony and the fresh air
kept him awake. The boy had offered to go with him, but that he had
altogether refused;--and, therefore, to his other cares was added
that of finding his way. The sweep of the valleys, however, is long
and not abrupt, and he could hardly miss his road if he would only
make one judicious turn through a gap in a certain wall which lay
half way between the cottage and the castle. He was thinking of the
work in hand, and he found the gap without difficulty. When through
that he ascended the hill for two miles, and then the sea was before
him, and Portray Castle, lying, as it seemed to him at that distance,
close upon the sea-shore. "Upon my word, Lizzie has not done badly
for herself," he said almost aloud, as he looked down upon the fair
sight beneath him, and round upon the mountains, and remembered that,
for her life at least, it was all hers, and after her death would
belong to her son. What more does any human being desire of such a
property than that?

He rode down to the great doorway,--the mountain track which fell
on to the road about half a mile from the castle having been plain
enough, and there he gave up the pony into the hands of no less a
man than Mr. Gowran himself. Gowran had watched the pony coming down
the mountain-side, and had desired to see of what like was "her
leddyship's" cousin. In telling the whole truth of Mr. Gowran, it
must be acknowledged that he thought that his late master had made
a very great mistake in the matter of his marriage. He could not
imagine bad things enough of Lady Eustace, and almost believed that
she was not now, and hadn't been before her marriage, any better than
she should be. The name of Admiral Greystock, as having been the
father of his mistress, had indeed reached his ears; but Andy Gowran
was a suspicious man, and felt no confidence even in an admiral,--in
regard to whom he heard nothing of his having, or having had, a wife.