e bill. But
you may depend upon it I shall do nothing of the sort."

No one spoke for a few minutes. Then Walter stammered out that he was
very sorry.

"Sorry, indeed!" cried his father; "that's poor amends. But it seems
I'm to have nothing but disobedience and misery from my children."

"Dear Walter," said his sister gently, "are you not a little hard upon
the poor boy?"

"Hard, Kate?--poor boy?--nonsense! You're just like all the rest,
spoiling and ruining him by your foolish indulgence. He's to be master,
it seems, of the whole of us, and I may as well give up the management
of the estate and of my purse into his hands."

Miss Huntingdon ventured no reply; she felt that it would be wiser to
let the first violence of the storm blow by. But now Amos rose, and
approached his father, and confronted him, looking at him calmly and
steadily. Never before had that shy, reserved young man been seen to
look his father so unflinchingly in the face. Never, when his own
personal character or comfort had been at stake, had he dreamt of so
much as a remonstrance. He had left it to others to speak for him, or
had submitted to wrong or neglect without murmuring. How different was
it now! How strange was the contrast between the wild flashing eyes of
the old man, and the deeply tranquil, thoughtful, and even spiritual
gaze of the son! Before that gaze the squire's eyes lost their fire,
his chest ceased to heave, he grew calm.

"What's the meaning of this?" he asked in a hoarse voice.

"Father," said Amos slowly, "I am persuaded that you are not doing full
justice to dear Walter. I must say a word for him. I do not think his
going and riding in the steeplechase was an act of direct disobedience.
I think your leave was implied when you said that at any rate he must
not look to you for a horse. I know that you would have preferred his
not going, and so must he have known, but I do not think that he was
wrong in supposing that you had not absolutely forbidden him."

"Indeed!" said Mr Huntingdon dryly and sarcastically, after a pause of
astonishment; "and may I ask where the three hundred guineas are to come
from? for I suppose the borrowed horse will have to be paid for."

"Father," said Walter humbly, and with tears in his eyes and a tremor in
his voice, "I know the horse must be paid for, because it was not
Saunders's own; he borrowed it for me, and I know that he cannot afford
the money. But it's an exaggerati