me
into something where I can make a little money, so that when _this_
estate comes to be sold, I may be the purchaser."

Colonel Clifford started up in great emotion.

"Sell Clifford Hall, where I was born, and you were born, and everybody
was born! Those estates I sold were only outlying properties."

"They were beautiful ones," said Walter. "I never see such peaches now."

"As you did when you were six years old," suggested the Colonel. "No, nor
you never will. I've been six myself. Lord knows when it was, though!"

"But, sir, I don't see any such trout, and no such haunts for snipe."

"Do you mean to insult me?" cried the Colonel, rather suddenly. "This is
what we are come to now. Here's a brat of six begins taking notes against
his own father; and he improves on the Scotch poet--he doesn't print 'em.
No, he accumulates them cannily until he is twenty, but never says a
word. He loads his gun up to the muzzle, and waits, as the years roll on,
with his linstock in his hand, and one fine day _at breakfast_ he fires
his treble charge of grape-shot at his own father."

This was delivered so loudly that John feared a quarrel, and to interrupt
it, put in his head, and said, mighty innocently:

"Did you call, sir? Can I do anything for you, sir?"

"Yes: go to the devil!"

John went, but not down-stairs, as suggested--a mere lateral movement
that ended at the keyhole.

"Well, but, sir," said Walter, half-reproachfully, "it was you elicited
my views."

"Confound your views, sir, and--your impudence! You're in the right,
and I am in the wrong" (this admission with a more ill-used tone than
ever). "It's the race-horses. Ring the bell. What sawneys you young
fellows are! it used not to take six minutes to ring a bell when I was
your age."

Walter, thus stimulated, sprang to the bell-rope, and pulled it all down
to the ground with a single gesture.

The Colonel burst out laughing, and that did him good; and Mr. Baker
answered the bell like lightning; he quite forgot that the bell must have
rung fifty yards from the spot where he was enjoying the dialogue.

"Send me the steward, John; I saw him pass the window."

Meantime the Colonel marched up and down with considerable agitation.
Walter, who had a filial heart, felt very uneasy, and said, timidly, "I
am truly sorry, father, that I answered your questions so bluntly."

"I'm not, then," said the Colonel. "I hold him to be less than a man who
flies from the tru