"And have you no other? No John, for instance, nor Roger, nor Ralph ?"

"None but Bernard."

"Why not John Bernard? It would have made a fine name!" "I don't suppose John sounded well in the ears of those who gave me my name."

"Then, when your mother, no, I'm not going to discuss her; don't be afraid-when she told you how she had decided your destiny for you-did you feel content with her decision?"

Perfectly-why not?"

32

"Tell me what she said about me. Did she teach you to hate me? "No. I remember it well. I was about six years old, and I was learning my lessons in my mother's room. She had been downstairs, but presently came up again, looking pale and determined. She came up to me, and took me up in her strong arms, and kissed me often, and asked me if I would like to go away from her and live with someone else? I cried out, 'No.' Not if I had toys and sweets, she said, and a pony, and a beautiful home! And you, mother,' I answered. 'No, not me, my boy.' I bawled out lustily that I would not go; and she kissed me with a kind of wild passion, and called me her lion-hearted boy. Afterwards when I grew older, she told me all about your offer. She said you had sent a messenger to say that if she chose to give me up entirely to you for eleven months in the year, and during that time to hold no communication with me or with you-she might have what was left of me, for one-and she said she had sent you back the answer that you deserved. I say she did right. If I were begging my bread in the streets, I should say she had done right."

His grandfather had been gazing intently at him as he spoke, drinking in, as it were, every word that he uttered. As Aglionby ceased, he drew a long sigh, and a strangely subdued look came over his face. He passed his hand across his eyes and said, in a low voice, as if communing with himself:

"Ay! ay! such was my message such was my message. Then," he added presently, looking up again, "since you are called after your mother and her people; since you have been delivered over into their hands, what have they done for you? Perhaps you were too proud to accept their assistance, eh?"

A gleam of hope, pleasure, and approval dawned in his eyes, and he looked eagerly at Aglionby.

"My mother had no people, except her one sister, who was as poor and as brave as herself. I never refused their assistance, for it was never offered me. They had no means of assisting me."

"No means! I thought" he began, looking strangely at

Bernard, while a dark red colour suffused his face. He muttered something to himself and seemed to ponder upon it.

looking up again he asked:

"And pray, what do you think of me?"

Then suddenly

His choler had subsided, and he looked up into the sombre face above him, with an expression akin to wistfulness.

"Of you? I know absolutely nothing of you, except that one action of yours, which you cannot possibly expect me to think right. For the rest, you are my father's father, and entitled to my outward respect, at least."

"Humph! Then, when your mother refused my offer, what did she do?" he asked suspiciously.

"She went on with her music-teaching and her drudgery. She worked for me," said Aglionby with passionate though repressed emotion. "And six years ago, when I could have begun to repay her, she died."

No asseverations were necessary to emphasise the feeling that lay beneath this simple and unadorned statement of a fact. It seemed to cause some reflection to the elder man, who, however, presently said: "How would you like, when next you have a holiday, to come and spend it at Scar Foot?"

Bernard's eyes suddenly lighted. His face changed. Then he laughed a little and said:

"Not at all, thank you."

"No? Why not?" asked the other, in a tone of deep mortification.

"Because I have neither part nor lot in Scar Foot, and will not go near it. I will keep to the friends I know."

"Sirrah! What friends can you have they? How can they help you?

have here? What influence What can they do for you?"

"Nothing; that's just it. I have everything to do for myself, and it is best to remain where nothing can happen to disturb my conviction on that point.'

"Then you don't realise that I still could, if I chose, put you out of the necessity of doing anything, could provide for you amply, without your needing to lift a finger."

Bernard laughed again, more cynically than before.

Nor do I forget your All the Aglionbys are told me so, and I feel

"If you chose, and if I chose," he said. "You seem to forget that I am Bernarda Long's son, but I do not. own character, your caprice, your hardness. hard and obdurate as rocks; my mother has it in my own breast. You are not one who could put up with being thwarted. If I saw much of you, I should probably do something to thwart you every day. I have hands to work with"- he held them

out; "a head to plan with "-he smiled ambiguously; "health to carry me through adversities, and a will which enables me to restrain my wishes and desires within reasonable bounds. So long as those things are left me, I am my own master, and my own master I will remain."

"A bright life, truly!" sneered the other. "Hard work for a bare subsistence grinding your brains to powder to keep body and soul together; a strong will to be used for nothing but to repress the natural desires and impulses of a young man of spirit-a pretty life, truly, and I wish you joy of it!"

"It's not much to boast of, is it? A poor thing, sir, but mine own.' Fortunately there are always things in this world, and especially in a big town like this, to take a man outside himself, or he would be in a bad way."

"Plays for instance, and concerts. It runs in the blood to be fond of such things."

"Yes. Luckily for me, it does. They have driven the devil from my elbow more than once, and will do so again, I doubt not." "Oh, then he does sit at your elbow sometimes, does he?" "Often enough, and black enough he looks."

"What shape does he take now? What does he look like?"

Many a shape. Once he dragged me through some months of low dissipation-I'm an elevated character you perceive. He got me into the mire and held me there, till I was nearly choked. But I managed to scramble out somehow. That was after my mother had gone," he added slowly, and with hesitation. "I had nothing then, not a soul to turn to. Bah! It's a filthy recollection. He takes other shapes now."

"As what, for instance?"

"Oh, now he oftenest looks like a lean knave, clutching an empty purse, and pointing his finger along a cold road full of milestones that get more and more tumbledown-looking as you go on. I passed the twenty-sixth of them the other day."

"Ha!" said the old man, clutching the round knob of his stick, pursing his mouth, and staring down at the dusty floor with round, open eyes, as he shook his head a little. "I know him. I know those milestones too. You've many yet to pass before you get to the one that I tottered by a few weeks ago."

"Which was that?" asked Aglionby in a softer tone.

"The seventy-second."

"Ah! That is a long way from twenty-six."

"Ay, it is. Well; you haven't made yourself out a smooth or delicate character," he said, with sudden quickness and keenness. Aglionby shrugged his shoulders.

"Why should I? You would hardly have believed me if I had, seeing that I am one of your own race. Such as I am, I have told you-why, I couldn't say, whatever you were to give me for it." "And your existence here, is it an inspiriting one?"

"No-at least, not that part of it which is devoted to business." "It is not a business in which you are likely to rise, then?"

"Not unless I bought my rise. The heavier you are weighted —with gold-the faster you get on in the race," said Bernard rather dryly.

"H'm! Did you choose it for yourself?"

"Necessity and the length of my mother's purse chose it for me.. They bound me over to them for five years, and paid me various salaries during that time, beginning with five pounds, and ending with the dizzy eminence of five-and-twenty. Since then, by screwing hard, I've been able to keep myself."

"And is the situation pretty secure?"

"It is quite secure, so long as I am the cheapest and hardestworking fellow they can find for it."

"But why should you submit to such scurvy treatment? A grandson of mine! Monstrous! give them a lesson; offer to leave them." Again Aglionby laughed the cynic's laugh.

They would take me at my word at once, and there would be fifty hungry men waiting to step into my shoes, and to thank heaven on their knees for the work that I was too dainty for."

"But you could find something else something more suited" "When I can something more remunerative-I shall cut the present concern without scruple, I assure you.”

"What would you be, if you had to choose?"

"That's a leading question, but I happen to have an answer ready for it. I'd be a politician, with enough money to help my cause forward, and the opposition one backward."

"Your cause being -I saw you at the Liberal Demonstration on Saturday."

"Yes, my cause is the Liberal cause, or rather the Liberal cause is mine."

The old man rose.

"I must go," said he. "When I came in here, I was thinking of you, and wondering where in all this great city you were to be found. I guessed who you were, when I heard that girl call you Bernard. Is she the girl you are engaged to?"

"Yes."

"Ah, well! wouldn't you really like to run over to Scar Foot? I can tell you it is a place well worth visiting-the fairest spot, I say, in the fairest county in all fair England."

"I daresay it would do me no good to see it under the circumstances," replied Bernard curtly, while an intense longing to look upon it rushed over him. Had he not heard its every room described by his father, till he felt that were he dropped down before it, he could find his way through it blindfold! He had heard the doggrel old verse which that father had repeated in his last hours, as he lay senseless and "babbled of green fields."

"To fair Scar Foot my thoughts I turn,

Whence late I walked with you,
Through fields bedewed-

There the recollection always broke off short; but Aglionby, from his earliest childhood, always thought of Scar Foot as surrounded with "fields bedewed." His father, exiled and banished, had never ceased to love his home, and return to it in fancy, with a dalesman's deep and ineradicable love. If he, Bernard, were thus disturbed at the mere idea of seeing the much-loved spot, what might the extent of his weakness be, should he ever really behold it? No; he would keep firm while yet he could; and he added nothing to his last words, though his lips were parted.

His grandsire watched him keenly.

"Can you unstiffen your fingers so as to shake hands with me?"

he asked.

Bernard paused. Then, literally carrying out the old man's words, he did unbend his obstinate joints, and put them within the old, knotted hand held out to him.

Their eyes met; there was plenty of dogged obstinacy in both their faces, plenty of self-opinionatedness, pride, determination; rugged, twisted characters, both of them, but honest. As their fingers touched, Bernard remembered and the recollection seemed to throw a new light over his mind-that his father had not been strong and sturdy like this; who was to say what provocation this irascible old man might not have received at the hands of his beloved? What passionately cherished hopes might not have been blighted when Ralph Aglionby left "Fair Scar Foot," at strife with his father, and after sulking in London for six months took to wife Bernarda Long, from among what must have seemed to the retired country squire the daughters of Heth-the ranks namely of poor musical professional people?

As if by one impulse their hands closed upon one another, in a mighty grip; then, without a word, were unclasped again.

Old John Aglionby walked erectly away, nor turned to look back, whatever his secret yearnings might be. His grandson, left to a few moments' solitude, stalked to a dingy window, and looked out upon the throng in the busy street below. The din became vague in his