There is such a thing as slack tide in the affairs of men, when a crisis seems as if it would never come, and all things stagnate. The Law Courts had as yet not concerned themselves about the will, vacation time had come and all was at a standstill, nor could any steps be taken for Lucas’s exchange till it was certain into what part of India Sir Philip Cameron was going. In the meantime his regiment had gone into camp, and he could not get away until the middle of September, and then only for a few days. Arriving very late on a Friday night, he saw nobody but his mother over his supper, and thought her looking very tired. When he met her in the morning, there was the same weary, harassed countenance, there were worn marks round the dark wistful eyes, and the hair, whitened at Schwarenbach, did not look as incongruous with the face as hitherto.

No one else except Barbara had come down to prayers, so Jock’s first inquiry was for Armine.

“He is pretty well,” said his mother; “but he is apt to be late. He gets overtired between his beloved parish work and his reading with Bobus.”

“He is lucky to get such a coach,” said Jock. “Bob taught me more mathematics in a week than I had learnt in seven years before.”

“He is terribly accurate,” said Babie.

“Which Armie does not appreciate?” said Jock.

“I’m afraid not,” said his mother. “They do worry each other a good deal, and this Infanta most of all, I’m afraid.”

“O no, mother,” said Babie. “Only it is hard for poor Armie to have two taskmasters.”

“What! the Reverend Petronella continues in the ascendant?”

Bobus here entered, with a face that lightened, as did everyone’s, at sight of Lucas.

“Good morning. Ah! Jock! I didn’t sit up, for I had had a long day out on the moors; we kept the birds nearer home for you. There are plenty, but Grimes says he has heard shots towards River Hollow, and thinks some one must have been trespassing there.”

“Have you heard anything of Elvira? apropos to River Hollow,” said his mother.

“Yes,” said Jock. “One of our fellows has been on a moor not far from where she was astonishing the natives, conjointly with Lady Anne Macnalty. There were bets which of three men she may be engaged to.”

“Pending which,” said his mother, “I suppose poor Allen will continue to hover on the wings of the Petrel?”

“And send home mournful madrigals by the ream,” said Bobus. “Never was petrel so tuneful a bird!”

“For shame, Bobus; I never meant you to see them!”

“‘Twas quite involuntary! I have trouble enough with my own pupil’s effusions. I leave him a bit of Latin composition, and what do I find but an endless doggerel ballad on What’s his name?—who hid under his father’s staircase as a beggar, eating the dogs’ meat, while his afflicted family were searching for him in vain;—his favourite example.”

“St. Alexis,” said Babie; “he was asked to versify it.”

“As a wholesome incentive to filial duty and industry,” said Bobus. “Does the Parsoness mean to have it sung in the school?”

“It might be less dangerous than ‘the fox went out one moonshiny night,’” said their mother, anxious to turn the conversation. “Mr. Parsons brought Mr. Todd of Wrexham in to see the school just as the children were singing the final catastrophe when the old farmer ‘shot the old fox right through the head.’ He was so horrified that he declared the schools should never have a penny of his while they taught such murder and heresy.”

“Served them right,” said Jock, “for spoiling that picture of domestic felicity when ‘the little ones picked the bones, oh!’ How many guns shall we be, Bobus?”

“Only three. My uncle has a touch of gout, the Monk has got a tutorship, Joe has gone back to his ship, but the mighty Bob has a week’s leave, and does not mean a bird to survive the change of owners.”

“Doesn’t Armine come?”

“Not he!” said Bobus. “Says he doesn’t want to acquire the taste, and he would knock up with half a day.”

“But you’ll all come and bring us luncheon?” entreated Jock. “You will, mother! Now, won’t you? We’ll eat it on a bank like old times when we lived at the Folly, and all were jolly. I beg your pardon, Bob; I didn’t mean to turn into another poetical brother on your hands, but enthusiasm was too strong for me! Come, Mother Carey, do!”

“Where is it to be?” she asked, smiling.

“Out by the Long Hanger would be a good place,” said Bobus, “where we found the Epipactis grandiflora.”

“Or the heathery knoll where poor little mother got into a scrape for singing profane songs by moonlight,” laughed Jock.

“Ah! that was when hearts were light,” she said; “but at any rate we’ll make a holiday of it, for Jock’s sake.”

“Ha! what do I see?” exclaimed Jock, who was opposite the open window. “Is that Armine, or a Jack-in-the-Green?”

“Oh!” half sighed Barbara. “It’s that harvest decoration!” And Armine, casting down armfuls of great ferns, and beautiful trailing plants, made his entrance through the open window, exchanging greetings, and making a semi-apology for his late appearance as he said—

“Mother, please desire Macrae to cut me the great white orchids. He won’t do it unless you tell him, and I promised them for the Altar vases.”

“You know, Armie, he said cutting them would be the ruin of the plant, and I don’t feel justified in destroying it.”

“Macrae’s fancy,” muttered Armine. “It is only that he hates the whole thing.”

“Unhappy Macrae! I go and condole with him sometimes,” said Bobus. “I don’t know which are most outraged—his Freekirk or his horticultural feelings!”

“Babie,” ordered Armine, who was devouring his breakfast at double speed, “if you’ll put on your things, I’ve the garden donkey-cart ready to take down the flowers. You won’t expect us to luncheon, mother?”

Barbara, though obedient, looked blank, and her mother said—

“My dear, if I went down and helped at the Church till half past twelve, could not we all be set free? Your brothers want us to bring their luncheon to them at the Hanger.”

“That’s right, mother,” cried Jock; “I’ve half a mind to come and expedite matters.”

“No, no, Skipjack!” cried Bobus; “I had that twenty stone of solid flesh whom I see walking up to the house to myself all yesterday, and I can’t stand another day of it unmitigated!”

Entered the tall heavy figure of Rob. He reported his father as much the same and not yet up, delivered a note to his aunt, and made no objection to devouring several slices of tongue and a cup of cocoa to recruit nature after his walk; while Bobus reclaimed the reluctant Armine from cutting scarlet geraniums in the ribbon beds to show him the scene in the Greek play which he was to prepare, and Babie tried to store up all the directions, perceiving from the pupil’s roving eye that she should have to be his memory.

Jock saw that the note had brought an additional line of care to his mother’s brow, and therefore still more gaily and eagerly adjured her not to fail in the Long Hanger, and as the shooting party started, he turned back to wave his cap, and shout, “Sharp two!”

Two o’clock found three hungry youths and numerous dead birds on the pleasant thymy bank beneath the edge of the beach wood, but gaze as they might through the clear September air, neither mother, brother, nor sister was visible. Presently, however, the pony-carriage appeared, and in it a hamper, but driven only by the stable-boy. He said a gentleman was at the house, and Mrs. Brownlow was very sorry that she could not come, but had sent him with the luncheon.

“I shall go and see after her,” said Jock; and in spite of all remonstrance, and assurance that it was only a form of Parsonic tyranny, he took a draught of ale and a handful of sandwiches, sprang into the carriage, and drove off, hardly knowing why, but with a yearning towards his mother, and a sense that all that was unexpected boded evil. Leaving the pony at the stables, and walking up to the house, he heard sounds that caused him to look in at the open library window.

On one side of the table stood his mother, on the other Dr. Demetrius Hermann, with insinuating face, but arm upraised as if in threatening.

“Scoundrel!” burst forth Jock. Both turned, and his mother’s look of relief and joy met him as he sprang to her side, exclaiming, “What does this mean? How dare you?”

“No, no!” she cried breathlessly, clinging to his arm. “He did not mean—it was only a gesture!”

“I’ll have no such gestures to my mother.”

“Sir, the honoured lady only does me justice. I meant nothing violent. Zat is for you English military, whose veapon is zie horsewhip.”

“As you will soon feel,” said Jock, “if you attempt to bully my mother. What does it mean, mother dear?”

“He made a mistake,” she said, in a quick, tremulous tone, showing how much she was shaken. “He thinks me a quack doctor’s widow, whose secret is matter of bargain and sale.”

“Madame! I offered most honourable terms.”

“Terms, indeed! I told you the affair is no empirical secret to be bought.”

“Yet madame knows that I am in possession of a portion of zie discovery, and that it is in my power to pursue it further, though, for family considerations, I offer her to take me into confidence, so that all may profit in unison,” said the Greek, in his blandest manner.

“The very word profit shows your utter want of appreciation,” said Mrs. Brownlow, with dignity. “Such discoveries are the property of the entire faculty, to be used for the general benefit, not for private selfish profit. I do not know how much information may have been obtained, but if any attempt be made to use it in the charlatan fashion you propose, I shall at once expose the whole transaction, and send my husband’s papers to the Lancet.”

Hermann shrugged his shoulders and looked at Lucas, as if considering whether more or less reason could be expected from a soldier than from a woman. It was to him that he spoke.

“Madame cannot see zie matter in zie light of business. I have offered freely to share all that I shall gain, if I may only obtain the data needful to perfect zie discovery of zie learned and venerated father. I am met wit anger I cannot comprehend.”

“Nor ever will,” said Caroline.

“And,” pursued Dr. Hermann, “when, on zie oder hand, I explain that my wife has imparted to me sufficient to enable me to perfectionate the discovery, and if the reserve be continued, it is just to demand compensation, I am met with indignation even greater. I appeal to zie captain. Is this treatment such as my proposals merit?”

“Not quite,” said Jock. “That is to be kicked out of the house, as you shortly will be, if you do not take yourself off.”

“Sir, your amiable affection for madame leads you to forget, as she does, zie claim of your sister.”

“No one has any claim on my mother,” said Jock.

“Zie moral claim—zie claim of affection,” began the Greek; but Caroline interrupted him—

“Dr. Hermann is not the person fitly to remind me of these. They have not been much thought of in Janet’s case. I mean to act as justly as I can by my daughter, but I have absolutely nothing to give her at present. Till I know what my own means may prove to be I can do nothing.”

“But madame holds out zie hope of some endowment. I shall be in a condition to be independent of it, but it would be sweet to my wife as a token of pardon. I could bear away a promise.”

“I promise nothing,” was the reply. “If I have anything to give—even then, all would depend on your conduct and the line you may take. And above all, remember, it is in my power to frustrate and expose any attempt to misuse any hints that may have been stolen from my husband’s memoranda. In my power, and my duty.”

“Madame might have spared me this,” sighed the Athenian. “My poor Janette! She will not believe how her husband has been received.”

He was gone. Caroline dropped into a chair, but the next moment she almost screamed—

“Oh, we must not let him go thus! He may revenge it on her! Go after him, get his address, tell him she shall have her share if he will behave well to her.”

Jock fulfilled his mission according to his own judgment, and as he returned his mother started up.

“You have not brought him back!”

“I should rather think not!”

“Janet’s husband! Oh, Jock, it is very dreadful! My poor child!”

She had been a little lioness in face of the enemy, but she was trembling so hopelessly that Jock put her on a couch and knelt with his arm round her while she laid her head on his strong young shoulder.

“Let me fetch you some wine, mother darling,” he said.

“No, no—to feel you is better than anything,” putting his arm closer—

“What was it all about, mother?”

“Ah! you don’t know, yet you went straight to the point, my dear champion.”

“He was bullying you, that was enough. I thought for a moment the brute was going to strike you.”

“That was only gesticulation. I’m glad you didn’t knock him down when you made in to the rescue.”

She could laugh a little now.

“I should like to have done it. What did he want? Money, of course?”

“Not solely. I can’t tell you all about it; but Janet saw some memoranda of your father’s, and he wants to get hold of them.”

“To pervert them to some quackery?”

“If not, I do him great injustice.”

“Give them up to a rogue like that! I should guess not! It will be some little time before he tries again. Well done, little mother!”

“If he will not turn upon her.”

“What a speculation he must have thought her.”

“Don’t talk of it, Jock; I can’t bear to think of her in such hands.”

“Janet has a spirit of her own. I should think she could get her way with her subtle Athenian. Where did he drop from?”

“He overtook me on my way back from the Church, for indeed I did not mean to break my appointment. I don’t think the servants knew who was here. And Jock, if you mention it to the others, don’t speak of this matter of the papers. Call it, as you may with truth, an attempt to extort money.”

“Very well,” he gravely said.

“It is true,” she continued, “that I have valuable memoranda of your father’s in my charge; but you must trust me when I say that I am not at liberty to tell you more.”

“Of course I do. So the mother was really coming, like a good little Red-riding-hood, to bring her son’s dinner into the forest, when she met with the wolf! Pray, has he eaten up the two kids at a mouthful?”

“No, Miss Parsons had done that already. They are making the Church so beautiful, and it did not seem possible to spare them, though I hope Armine may get home in time to get his work done for Bobus.”

“Is not he worked rather hard between the two? He does not seem to thrive on it.”

“Jock, I can say it to you. I don’t know what to do. The poor boy’s heart is in these Church matters, and he is so bitterly grieved at the failure of all his plans that I cannot bear to check him in doing all he can. It is just what I ought to have been doing all these years; I only saw my duties as they were being taken away from me, and so I deserve the way Miss Parsons treats me.”

“What way?”

“You need not bristle up. She is very civil; but when I hint that Armine has study and health to consider, I see that in her eyes I am the worldly obstructive mother who serves as a trial to the hero.”

“If she makes Armine think so—”

“Armie is too loyal for that. Yet it may be only too true, and only my worldliness that wishes for a little discretion. Still, I don’t think a sensible woman, if she were ever so good and devoted, would encourage his fretting over the disappointment, or lead him to waste his time when so much depends on his diligence. I am sure the focus of her mind must be distorted, and she is twisting his the same way.”

“And her brother follows suit?”

“I think they go in parallel grooves, and he lets her alone. It is very unlucky, for they are a constant irritation to Bobus, and he fancies them average specimens of good people. He sneers, and I can’t say but that much of what he says is true, but there is the envenomed drop in it which makes his good sense shocking to Armine, and I fear Babie relishes it more than is good for her. So they make one another worse, and so they will as long as we are here. It was a great mistake to stay on, and your uncle must feel it so.”

“Could you not go to Dieppe, or some cheap place?”

“I don’t feel justified in any more expense. Here the house costs nothing, and our personal expenditure does not go beyond our proper means; but to pay for lodging elsewhere would soon bring me in excess of it, at least as long as Allen keeps up the yacht. Then poor Janet must have something, and I don’t know what bills may be in store for me, and there’s your outfit, and Bobus’s.”

“Never mind mine.”

“My dear, that’s fine talking, but you can’t go like Sir Charles Napier, with one shirt and a bit of soap.”

“No, but I shall get something for the exchange. Besides, my kit was costly even for the Guards, and will amply cover all that.”

“And you have sold your horses?”

“And have been living on them ever since! Come, won’t that encourage you to make a little jaunt, just to break the spell?”

“I wish it could, my dear, but it does not seem possible while those bills are such a dreadful uncertainty. I never know what Allen may have been ordering.”

“Surely the Evelyns would be glad to have you.”

“No, Jock, that can’t be. Promise me that you will do nothing to lead to an invitation. You are to meet some of them, are you not?”

“Yes, on Thursday week, at Roland Hampton’s wedding. Cecil and I and a whole lot of us go down in the morning to it, and Sydney is to be a bridesmaid. What are you going to do now, mother?”

“I don’t quite know. I feel regularly foolish. I shall have a headache if I don’t keep quiet, but I can’t persuade myself to stay in the house lest that man should come back.”

“What! not with me for garrison?”

“O nonsense, my dear. You must go and catch up the sportsmen.”

“Not when I can get my Mother Carey all to myself. You go and lie down in the dressing-room, and I’ll come as soon as I have taken off my boots and ordered some coffee for you.”

He returned with the step of one treading on eggs, expecting to find her half asleep; but her eyes were glittering, and there were red spots on her cheeks, for her nerves were excited, and when he came in she began to talk. She told him, not of present troubles, but of the letters between his father and grandmother, which, in her busy, restless life, she had never before looked at, but which had come before her in her preparations for vacating Belforest. Perhaps it was only now that she had grown into appreciation of the relations between that mother and son, as she read the letters, preserved on each side, and revealing the full beauty and greatness of her husband’s nature, his perfect confidence in his mother, and a guiding influence from her, which she herself had never thought of exerting. Does not many an old correspondence thus put the present generation to shame?

Jock was the first person with whom she had shared these letters, and it was good to watch his face as he read the words of the father whom he remembered chiefly as the best of playfellows. He was of an age and in a mood to enter into them with all his heart, though he uttered little more than an occasional question, or some murmured remark when anything struck him. Both he and his mother were so occupied that they never observed that the sky clouded over and rain began to fall, nor did they think of any other object till Bobus opened the door in search of them.

“Halloo, you deserter!”

“Hush! Mother has a headache.”

“Not now, you have cured it.”

“Well, you’ve missed an encounter with the most impudent rascal I ever came across.”

“You didn’t meet Hermann?”

“Well, perhaps I have found his match; but you shall hear. Grimes said he heard guns, and we came upon the scoundrel in Lewis Acre, two brace on his shoulder.”

“The vultures are gathering to the prey,” said his mother.

“I’m not arrived at lying still to be devoured!” said Bobus. “I gave him the benefit of a doubt, and sent Grimes to warn him off; but the fellow sent his card—his card forsooth, ‘Mr. Gilbert Gould, R.N.,’—and information that he had Miss Menella’s permission.”

“Not credible,” said Jock.

“Mrs. Lisette’s more likely,” said his mother. “I think he is her brother.”

“I sent Grimes back to tell him that Miss Menella had as much power to give leave as my old pointer, and if he did not retire at once, we should gently remove his gun and send out a summons.”

“Why did you not do so at once?” cried Jock.

“Because I have brains enough not to complicate matters by a personal row with the Goulds,” said Bobus, “though I could wish not to have been there, when the keepers would infallibly have done so. Shall I write to George Gould, or will you, mother?”

“Oh dear,” sighed Caroline, “I think Mr. Wakefield is the fittest person, if it signifies enough to have it done at all.”

“Signifies!” cried Jock. “To have that rascal loafing about! I wouldn’t be trampled upon while the life is in me!”

“I don’t like worrying Mr. Gould. It is not his fault, except for having married such a wife, poor man.”

“Having been married by her, you mean,” said Bobus. “Mark me, she means to get that fellow married to that poor child, as sure as fate.”

“Impossible, Bobus! His age!”

“He is a good deal younger than his sister, and a prodigious swell.”

“Besides, he is her uncle,” said Jock.

“No, no, only her uncle’s wife’s brother.”

“That’s just the same.”

“I wish it were!” But Jock would not be satisfied without getting a Prayer-book, to look at the table of degrees.

“He is really her third cousin, I believe,” said his mother, “and I’m afraid that is not prohibited.”

“Is he a ship’s steward?” said Jock, looking at the card with infinite disgust.

“A paymaster’s assistant, I believe.”

“That would be too much. Besides, there’s the Scot!”

“I don’t think much of that,” said Jock. “The mother and sister are keen for it, but Clanmacnalty is in no haste to marry, and by all accounts the Elf carries on promiscuously with three or four at once.”

“And she has no fine instinct for a gentleman,” added Bobus. “It is who will spread the butter thickest!”

“A bad look out for Belforest,” said Jock.

“It can’t be much worse than it has been with me,” said his mother.

“That’s what that little ass, Armine, has been presuming to din into your ears,” said Bobus; “as if the old women didn’t prefer beef and blankets to your coming poking piety at the poor old parties.”

“By the bye,” cried Caroline, starting, “those children have never come home, and see how it rains!”

Jock volunteered to take the pony carriage and fetch them, but he had not long emerged from the park in the gathering twilight before he overtook two figures under one umbrella, and would have passed them had he not been hailed.

“You demented children! Jump in this instant.”

“Don’t turn!” called Armine. “We must take this,” showing a parcel which he had been sheltering more carefully than himself or his sister. “It is cord and tassels for the banner. They sent wrong ones,” said Barbara, “and we had to go and match it. They would not let me go alone.”

“Get in, I say,” cried Jock, who was making demonstrations with the “national weapon” much as if he would have liked to lay it about their shoulders.

“Then we must drive onto the Parsonage,” stipulated Armine.

“Not a bit of it, you drenched and foolish morsel of humanity. You are going straight home to bed. Hand us the parcel. What will you give me not to tie this cord round the Reverend Petronella’s neck?”

“Thank you, Jock, I’m so glad,” said Babie, referring probably to the earlier part of his speech. “We would have come home for the pony carriage, but we thought it would be out.”

“Take care of the drip,” was Armine’s parting cry, as Babie turned the pony’s head, and Jock strode down the lane. He meant merely to have given in the parcel at the door, but Miss Parsons darted out, and not distinguishing him in the dark began, “Thank you, dear Armine; I’m so sorry, but it is in the good cause and you won’t regret it. Where’s your sister? Gone home? But you’ll come and have a cup of tea and stay to evensong?”

“My brother and sister are gone home, thank you,” said Jock, with impressive formality, and a manly voice that made her start.

“Oh, indeed. Thank you, Mr. Brownlow. I was so sorry to let them go; but it had not begun to rain, and it is such a joy to dear Armine to be employed in the service.”

“Yes, he is mad enough to run any risk,” said Jock.

“Oh, Mr. Brownlow, if I could only persuade you to enter into the joy of self-devotion, you would see that I could not forbid him! Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea?”

“Thank you, no. Good night.” And Miss Parsons was left rejoicing at having said a few words of reproof to that cynical Mr. Robert Brownlow, while Jock tramped away, grinning a sardonic smile at the lady’s notions of the joys of self-sacrifice.

He came home only just in time for dinner, and found Armine enduring, with a touching resignation learnt in Miss Parsons’s school, the sarcasm of Bobus for having omitted to prepare his studies. The boy could neither eat nor entirely conceal the chills that were running over him; and though he tried to silence his brother’s objurgations by bringing out his books afterwards, his cheeks burnt, he emitted little grunting coughs, and at last his head went down on the lexicon, and his breath came quick and short.

The Harvest Festival day was perforce kept by him in bed, blistered and watched from hour to hour to arrest the autumn cold, which was the one thing dreaded as imperilling him in the English winter which he must face for the first time for four years.

And Miss Parsons, when impressively told, evidently thought it was the family fashion to make a great fuss about him.

Alas! why are people so one-sided and absorbed in their own concerns as never to guess what stumbling-blocks they raise in other people’s paths, nor how they make their good be evil spoken of?

Babie confided her feelings to Jock when he escorted her to Church in the evening, and had detected a melancholy sound in her voice which made him ask if she thought Armine’s attack of the worst sort.

“Not particularly, except that he talks so beautifully.”

Jock gave a small sympathetic whistle at this dreadful symptom, and wondered to hear that he had been able to talk.

“I didn’t mean only to-day, but this is only what he had made up his mind to. He never expects to leave Belforest, and he thinks—oh, Jock!—he thinks it is meant to do Bobus good.”

“He doesn’t go the way to edify Bobus.”

“No, but don’t you see? That is what is so dreadful. He only just reads with Bobus because mother ordered him; and he hates it because he thinks it is of no use, for he will never be well enough to go to college. Why, he had this cold coming yesterday, and I believe he is glad, for it would be like a book for him to be very bad indeed, bad enough to be able to speak out to Bobus without being laughed at.”

“Does he always go on in this way?”

“Not to mother; but to hear him and Miss Parsons is enough to drive one wild. They went on such a dreadful way yesterday that I was furious, and so glad to get away to Kenminster; only after I had set off, he came running after me, and I knew what that would be.”

“What does she do? Does she blarney him?”

“Yes, I suppose so. She means it, I believe; but she does natter him so that it would make me sick, if it didn’t make me so wretched! You see he likes it, because he fancies her goodness itself; and so I suppose she is, only there is such a lot of clerical shop”—then, as Jock made a sound as if he did not like the slang in her mouth—“Ay, it sounds like Bobus; but if this goes on much longer, I shall turn to Bobus’s way. He has all the sense on his side!”

“No, Babie,” said Jock very gravely. “That’s a much worse sort of folly!”

“And he will be gone before long,” said Barbara, much struck by a tone entirely unwonted from her brother. “O Jock, I thought reverses would be rather nice and help one to be heroic, and perhaps they would, if they would only come faster, and Armine could be out of Miss Parsons’s way; but I don’t believe he will ever be better while he is here. I think!—I think!” and she began to sob, “that Miss Parsons will really be the death of him if she is not hindered!”

“Can’t he go on board the Petrel with Allen?”

“Mother did think of that,” said Babie, “but Allen said he wasn’t in spirits for the charge, and that cabin No. 2 wasn’t comfortable enough.”

Jock was not the least surprised at this selfishness, but he said—

“We will get him away somehow, Infanta, never fear! And when you have left this place, you’ll be all right. You’ll have the Friar, and he is a host in himself.”

“Yes,” said Babie, ruefully, “but he is not a brother after all. Oh, Jock! mother says it is very wrong in me, but I can’t help it.”

“What is wrong, little one?”

“To feel it so dreadful that you and Bobus are going! I know it is honour and glory, and promotion, and chivalry, and Victoria crosses, and all that Sydney and I used to care for; but, oh! we never thought of those that stayed at home.”

“You were a famous Spartan till the time came,” said Jock, in an odd husky voice.

“I wouldn’t mind so much but for mother,” said poor Barbara, in an apologetic tone; “nor if there were any stuff in Allen; nor if dear Armie were well and like himself; but, oh dear! I feel as if all the manhood and comfort of the family would be gone to the other end of the world.”

“What did you say about mother?”

“I beg your pardon, Jock, I didn’t mean to worry you. I know it is a grand thing for you. But mother was so merry and happy when we thought we should all be snug with you in the old house, and she made such nice plans. But now she is so fagged and worn, and she can’t sleep. She began to read as soon as it was light all those long summer mornings to keep from thinking; and she is teasing herself over her accounts. There were shoals of great horrid bills of things Allen ordered coming in at Midsummer, just as she thought she saw her way! Do you know, she thinks she may have to let our own house and go into lodgings.”

“Is that you, Barbara?” said a voice at the Parsonage wicket. “How is our dear patient?”

“Rather better to-night, we think.”

“Tell him I hope to come and see him to-morrow. And say the vases are come. I thought your mother would wish us to have the large ones, so I put them in the Church. They are £3.”

Babie thought Jock’s face was dazed when he came among the lights in Church, and that he moved and responded like an automaton, and she could hardly get a word out of him all the way home. There, they were sent for to Armine, who was sufficiently better to want to hear all about the services, the procession, the wheat-sheaf, the hymns, and the sermons. Jock stood the examination well till it came to evensong, when, as his sister had conjectured, he knew nothing, except one sentence, which he said had come over and over again in the sermon, and he wanted to know whence it came. It was, “Seekest thou great things for thyself.”

Even Armine only knew that it was in a note in the “Christian Year,” and Babie looked out the reference, and found that it was Jeremiah’s rebuke to Baruch for self-seeking amid the general ruin.

“I liked Baruch,” she said. “I am sorry he was selfish.”

“Noble selfishness, perhaps,” said Armine. “He may have aimed at saving his country and coming out a glorious hero, like Gideon or Jephthah.”

“And would that have been self-seeking too, as well as the commoner thing?” said Babie.

“It is like a bit of New Testament in the midst of the Old,” said Armine. “They that are great are called Benefactors—a good sort of greatness, but still not the true Christian greatness.”

“And that?” said Babie.

“To be content to be faithful servant as well as faithful soldier,” said Armine, thoughtfully. “But what had it to do with the harvest?”

He got no satisfaction, Babie could remember nothing but Jock’s face, and Jock had taken the Bible, and was looking at the passages referred to He sat for a long time resting his head on his hand, and when at last he was roused to bid Armine goodnight, he bent over him, kissed him, and said, “In spite of all, you’re the wise one of us, Armie boy. Thank you.”