her life to deserve scolding. Vi," cried | Ah, had it but been Valentine! He nevVal, turning to her suddenly, "do you er would disappoint any one-never turn remember the day we played truant? If into a dilettante, loving china better than Mary hadn't been here, I meant to carry you off again into the woods."

:

Violet looked up first at him and then at Mary the first glance was full of delight and tender gratitude, the other was indignant and defiant. "Is this the boy you have been slandering?" Vi's eyes said, as plain as eyes could speak, to her elder friend. Miss Percival rose and made the gentleman a curtsy.

"If Mary is much in your way, she will go; but as Vi is a young lady now, perhaps Mary's presence would be rather an advantage than otherwise. I put my self at your orders, young people, for the woods, or wherever you like."

child or wife. She kissed Mary in a little outburst of pity-pity so angelic that Violet almost longed to change places with her, that she might see and prove for herself how different Valentine was. As for Mary, she made herself responsi ble for this mad expedition with a great confusion and mingling of feelings. She went, she said to herself, to prevent harm; but some strange mixture of a visionary maternity, and of a fellow-feeling quite incompatible with her mature age, was in her mind at the same time. She said to herself, with a sigh, as she went down the slope, that she might have been the boy's mother, and let her "Well," said Val, with the composure heart soften to him, as she had never of his age, "perhaps it might be as well done before; though I think this same if you would come too. Run to the thought it was which had made her feel a larder, Violet, and look if there's a pie. little instinctive enmity to him, because I'll go and coax Jean for the old basket he was not her son but another woman's. the very old basket that we had on How lightly the boy and girl tripped that wonderful day. Quick! and your along over the woodland paths, waiting cloak, Vi." He rushed away from them like a whirlwind; and soon after, while the two ladies were still looking at each other in doubt whether he should be humoured or not, Jean's voice was heard approaching round the corner from her

nest.

"Pie! Set you up with dainty dishes! Na, Mr. Valentine, you'll get nae pie from me, though you have the grace to come and ask for it this time; but I'll make you some sandwiches, if ye like, for you've a tongue like the very deil himself. Oh ay go away with your phrases. If you were wanting onything you would take little heed o' your good Jean, your old friend."

"Listen," said Mary to Vi.

"No that ye're an ill laddie, when a's said. You're not one of the mim-mouthed ones, like your father before you; but I wouldna say but you were more to be lippened to, with all your noise and your nonsense. There, go away with you. I'll do the best I can, and you'll take care of missie. Here's your basket till ye, ye wild lad."

for her at every corner, chattering their happy nonsense, filling the sweet, mellow, waving woods with their laughter! They pushed down to the river, though the walk was somewhat longer than Mary cared for, and brought her to the glade in which the two runaways had eaten their dinner, and where Vi had been found asleep on Val's shoulder. "It looks exactly as it did then, but how different we are!" cried Violet, on the warm, green bank, where her shoes and stockings had been put to dry. Mary sat down on the sunny grass and watched them as they poked into all the corners they remembered and called to them with maternal tremblings, when the boy once more led the girl across the stepping-stones to the great boulder, by the side of which Esk foamed and flashed. She asked herself, was it possible that this bold brown boy would ever turn to be like his father? and tried to recollect whether Richard had ever been so kind, so considerate of any one's comfort, as Val was of Vi's. Was it perhaps possible that, instead of her own failure, this romance, so prettily begun, might come to such a climax of

Vi had grasped Mary's arm in return when old Jean continued; but being piti-happiness as romances all feign to end ful, the girl in her happiness would not say anything to increase what she felt must be the pain of the woman by her side. Vi had divined easily enough that it was Valentine's father of whom Mary spoke; and the child pitied the woman, who was old enough to be her mother.

in? Mary, I fear, though she was so sensible, became slightly foolish as she sat under the big bank, and looked at the two in the middle of the stream together, Esk roaring by over his rocks, and making the words with which she called them back, quite inaudible. How handsome

Val looked, and how pretty and poetic his candidate was but eighteen, and for his little companion! The bank of wood opposite was all tinted with autumn colour, rich and warm. It was a picture which any painter would have loved, and it went to Mary's heart.

the moment there was very little chance of a new election. Val, careless of the effect he was intended to produce, and quite unconscious of his grandfather's motives, was letting loose freely his boyish opinions, all marked, as we have said, with the Eton mark, which may be de

"But you are too big, Val, to play at the Babes in the Wood nowadays," said old Lady Eskside, with a little wrinkle inscribed as Conservative in the gross with her brow, when she heard of the freak; "and I wonder the Pringles leave that poor little thing by herself at the Hewan, sometimes for days together. They say it's for her health; but I think it would be much better for her health if she were under her mother's eye."

"But you must remember that I was with them," said Mary, "representing her mother, or a middle-aged supervision at least."

no very clear idea what the word means in detail, but a charming determination to stick to it, right or wrong. Lord Eskside smiled benignly upon these effusions, and so did most of his guests. "He has the root of the matter in him," said the old lord, addressing Sir John, who was as anxious as himself to have "a good man elected for the county, but who had no son, grandson, or nephew of his own; and Sir John nodded back in genial sympathy. Mr. Pringle, however, as was natural, being on the opposite side from the Rosses in everything, was also on the other side in politics, and maintained an eloquent silence during this Yes, I might know better if experi- part of the entertainment. He bided his enee could teach," said Mary; but ex-time, and when there came a lull in the perience so seldom teaches, notwith-conversation (a thing that will happen standing all that is said to the contrary! occasionally), he made such an interpolaAnd Mary could not but reflect that Lady Eskside had not frowned, but smiled upon her own delusion. Perhaps in such cases parental frowns are safer than smiles.

"My dear," said Lady Eskside, half angry, half smiling, as she shook her finger at her favourite, "I have my doubts that you are just a romantic gowk; though you might know better."

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CHAPTER XXI.

THERE was a great dinner at Rosscraig before Val went to Oxford: as much fuss made about him, the neighbours began to say, as was made for his father who came home so seldom, and had distinguished himself in diplomacy, and turned out to be a man of whom the county could be proud; whereas Val was but an untried boy going to college, of whom no one could as yet say how he would turn out. Mr. Pringle was invited to this great ceremonial, partly by way of defiance to show him how popular the heir was, and partly (for the two sentiments are not incapable of conjunction) out of kindness, as recognizing his relationship. He came, and he listened to the remarks, couched in mysterious terms, yet comprehensible enough, which were made as to Val's future connection with the county, in grim silence. After dinner, when the ladies had retired, and as the wine began to circulate, these allusions grew broader, and at length Mr. Pringle managed to make out very plainly that old Lord Eskside was already electioneering, though

tion as showed that his silence arose from no want of inclination to speak.

"Your sentiments are most elevated, Valentine," he said, "but your practice is democratical to an extent I should scarcely have looked for from your father's son. I hope your friend the boatman at Eton is flourishing-the one you introduced to my daughter and me?"

"A boatman at Eton," said the old lord, bending his brows, "introduced to Violet? You are dreaming, Pringle. I hope Val knows better than that."

"Indeed I think it shows very fine feelings on Valentine's part-this was one of nature's noblemen, I gathered from . what he said."

exclaimed

"Nature's fiddlestick!" Lord Eskside, and the Tory gentlemen pricked up their ears. There was scarcely one of them who did not recollect, or find himself on the eve of recollecting, at that moment, that Val's mother was not a lady," and that blood would out.

"I introduced him to you as a boatman, sir," said Val, not as anything else; though as for noblemen, Brown is worth twenty such as I have known with handles to their name. We get to estimate people by their real value at Eton, not by their accidental rank," said the youth splendidly, at which Mr. Pringle cried an ironical" Hear, hear!"

"Gently, gently, my young friend," I think it does you infinite credit," said said Sir John. "Rank is a great power Mr. Pringle, blandly. "I hope you have in this world, and not to be lightly spoken been having good sport at Castleton, of it does not become you to talk lightly Lord Hightowers. You ought to have of it; and it does not agree with your come out to my little moor at Dalrulzian, fine Tory principles, of which I warmly Val. I don't know when the boys have approve.' had better bags."

66

"What have Tory principles to do with it?" said Val. "A fellow may be rowdy or a snob though he is a lord; and in that case at Eton, sir, whatever may happen at other places, we give him the cold shoulder. I don't mean to set up Eton for an example," said Val, gravely, at which there was a general roar.

"Bravo, bravo, my young Tory!" cried the Duke himself, no less a person, who on that night honoured Lord Eskside's table. "In that respect, if you are right, Eton is an example, let any one who pleases take the other side."

"If Wales had been at Eton, and had been wowdy, we'd have sent him to Coventry as soon as look at him," said Lord Hightowers, smoothing an infantile down on his upper lip.

"A very fine sentiment; but I don't know if the antagonistic principle would work," said Mr. Pringle. "I am a Liberal, as everybody knows; but I don't care about admitting boatmen to my intimacy, however much I may contemnn an unworthy peer."

And thus the conversation fell back into its ordinary channels; indeed it had done so before this moment, the battle about Brown having quickly failed to interest the other members of the party. Lord Eskside sat bending his brows and straining his mind to hear, but as he had the gracious converse of a Duke to attend to, he could not actually forsake that potentate to make out the chatter of the boys with his adversary. Thus Mr. Pringle fired his first successful shot at Val. The Tory gentlemen forgot the story, but they remembered to have heard something or other of a love of low company on the part of Valentine Ross, "which, considering that nobody ever knew who his mother was, was perhaps not to be wondered at," some of the good people said. When Lady Eskside heard of it, she was so much excited by the malice of the suggestion, and expressed her feelings so forcibly, that Val blazed up into one of his violent sudden passions, and was rushing out to show Mr. Pringle himself what was thought of his "Did Brown intrude upon you?" said conduct, when his grandfather caught Valentine, bewildered; "was he impu- him and arrested him. "Do you want dent? did he do anything he oughtn't to? to make fools of us all with your intemThough I could almost as soon believe perate conduct, sir," cried the old lord, that I had behaved like a cad myself, if fire flashing from under his heavy brows. you say so I'll go down directly and kick" It is only a child that resents a slight the fellow." And poor Valentine, flushed like this a man must put up with a and excited, half rose from his seat. great deal and make no sign. Let the galled jade wince; my withers are unwrung.' That is the sort of sentiment that becomes us." I don't know if this good advice would have mollified Val but for the sudden appearance just then at one of the windows which opened on the terrace, of Violet in her blue gown, whose innocent eyes turned to them with a look which seemed to say, "Don't, oh don't, for my sake!" Of course Violet knew nothing about it, and meant nothing by her looks. It was the expression habitual to her, that was all; but as the old man and the young, one hot with fury, the other calming down his rage, perceived the pretty figure outside, the old lord dropped, as if it burned him, his hold on Val's arm, and Val himself stopped short, and, so to speak, lowered his weapons. "Is my lady in, please?" said Violet through the glass-which was all she

66

-

"Bwown!" said Lord Hightowers from the other side of the table. Beg your pardon, but you're mistaken; you must be mistaken. Bwown! best fellow that ever lived. Awfully sorry he's not a gentleman; but for a cad-no, not a cad a common sort of working fellow, he's the nicest fellow I ever saw. Couldn't have been impudent - not possible. It ain't in him, eh, Ross? or else I'd go and kick him too with pleasure," said the young aristocrat calmly.

Between the fire of these two pairs of young eyes, Mr. Pringle was somewhat taken aback.

"Oh, he was not impudent; on the contrary, a well-informed nice young fellow. My only wonder was, that young gentlemen of your anti-democratical principles should make a bosom friend of a man of the people—that's all. For my part,

had wanted to ask-with those sweet | manhood, and a new independence imploring looks. They opened the window for her eagerly, and she stepped in like something dropped out of the sky, in her blue gown, carrying her native colour with her. After this Val could not quite make out what it was that he had against Mr. Pringle, until Violet in her innocence brought the subject up.

"Mamma was scolding papa for something-something about Valentine," said Violet. "I did. not hear what it was."

"Indeed your papa seems to have spoken in far from a nice spirit, my dear, thongh I don't like to say it to you," said Lady Eskside. "What was it about, Val? some boatman whom he called your bosom friend.”

"Oh!" cried Violet, clasping her hands together, "it must have been that Mr. Brown. Papa used to talk of him for long and long after."

"And did you think, Violet," said the old lady, severely, "that my boy made

him his bosom friend?"

"Oh, Lady Eskside! he was so nice and so grateful to Val. I took such a fancy to him," cried Vi, with a blush and a smile, "because he was so grateful. He said Mr. Ross had done everything for him. Bosom friend! He looked I don't think I ever saw a man look so before. Women do sometimes," said Violet, with precocious comprehension, "as if he would have liked to be hurt or done some harm to for Val's sake."

of

feeling. He went to Balliol naturally, as the college of his country, and there fell into the hands of Mr. Gerald Grinder, who had condescended to be his private tutor long ago, just before he attained to the glories of his fellowship. Boys were thus passed up along the line among the Grinder family, which had an excellent connection, and throve well. Val was not clever enough nor studious enough to furnish the ambitious heads of his college with a future first-class man ; but as he had one great and well-established quality, they received him with more than ordinary satisfaction; for even at Balliol, has not the most sublime of colleges a certain respect for its place on the river? I have heard of such a thing as a Boating scholarship, the nominal examination for which is made very light indeed for famous oars; but anyhow, Val, though perhaps a very stiff matriculation paper might have floored him, got in upon comparatively easy terms. I will not say much about his successes, or even insist on the fact that Oxford was an easy winner on the river that triumphant day when Lichen rowed stroke and Val bow in the University boat, and all the small Etonians roared so under their big hats, that it was a mercy none of them exploded. Val did well, though not brilliantly, in his University career, as he had done at Eton. He had a little difficulty now and then with his hasty temper, but otherwise came to no harm; and thus, holding his own in intellectual matters, and doing more than hold his own in other points that rank quite as high in Oxford as in the rest of the academical world, made his way to his majority. I believe it crossed Lord Eskside's mind now and then to think that in Parliament it was very soon forgotten whether a man had been bow or even stroke of the 'Varsity boat; and that it could count for little in

"It is the boy I told you about, grandma," said Val—"the one that Grinder made himself disagreeable about; as if a fellow couldn't try to be of use to any other fellow without being had up. He rowed them up the river on the 4th of June. He ain't my bosom friend," he added, laughing; "but I'd rather have him to stand by me in a crowd than any one I know so that Mr. Pringle was right." "But he did not mean it so; it was ill-political life, and for less than nothing meant, it was ill-meant!" cried Lady Eskside. Violet looked at them both with entreating eyes.

"Papa may have said something wrong, but I am sure he did not mean it," said Vi, with the dew coming to her pretty eyes. Lady Eskside shook her head; but as for Val, his anger had stolen away out of his heart like the moisture on the grass when the sun comes out; but the sun at the moment had an azure radiance shining out of a blue gown.

Then Val went off to the University with a warm sense of his approaching

What good

with the sober constituency of a Scotch
county; but then, as all the youth of
England, and all the instructors of that
youth, set much store by the distinction,
even the anxious parent (not to say
grandfather) is mollified.
will all that nonsense do him?" the old
lord would growl, curling his shaggy eye-
brows, as he read in the papers, even the
most intellectual, a discussion of Val's
sinews and breadth of chest and "form"
before the great race was rowed.
least it cannot do him any harm," said
my lady, always and instantly on the de-

"At

fensive; "and I don't see why you should grudge our boy the honor that other folks' boys would give their heads for." "Other folks' boys may be foolish if they like I am concerned only for my own," said Lord Eskside; "what does the county care for his bowing or his stroke-ing? it's a kind of honour that will stand little wear and tear, however much you may think of it, my lady." But to tell the truth, I don't think my lady in her soul did think very much of it, except in so far that it was her principle to stand up for most things that pleased Val.

possibility of revealing herself to him ever been in her mind, it would have disappeared after their first interview. After that she had always kept in the background on the occasions when he came to see Dick, and had received his "Good morning, Mrs. Brown," without anything but a curtsy-without objecting to the name, as she had done on their first meeting. No, alas! a gentleman like that, with all the consciousness about him of a position so different, with that indescribable air of belonging to the highest class which the poor tramp-woman recog

In the meantime, however, the depart-nized at once, remembering her brief and ure of Val from Eton had produced a strange contact with it in that episode of much more striking effect upon some her existence which had been so incomnameless persons than even on any of prehensible at the time, but which had his other friends. Dick missed him with gradually unveiled and disentangled itself unfeigned and unconcealed regret. He through hours and years of brooding insisted upon carrying his bag to the sta- thought; a gentleman like that to have a tion for him, notwithstanding the cab mother like herself revealed to him—a which conveyed Val's other effects; and mother from the road, from the fairs and went home again in very depressed spir-racecourses! She almost cried out with its after having bidden him good-bye. But Dick's depression was nothing to that with which his mother sat gazing blankly over the river, with that look in her eyes which had for some time departed from them that air of looking for Something which she could not find, which had made her face so remarkable. She had never quite lost it, it is true; but the hope which used to light up her eyes of seeing, however far off, that one boat which she never failed to recognize shooting up or down the stream, had softened her expression wonderfully, and brought her back, as it were, to the things surrounding her. Val, though she saw so little of him, was as an anchor of her heart to the boy's mother. In the consciousness that he was near, that she should hear his name, see the shadow of him flitting across the brightness of the river, or that even when he was absent, a few weeks would bring back those dim and forlorn delights to her, kept the wild heart satisfied. This strange visionary absorption in the boy she had given up did not lessen her attachment to the boy she retained the good Dick, who had always been so good a son to her. She thought that she had totally given up Val; and certainly she never hoped, nor even desired, any more of him than she had from her window. Indeed, in her dim perpetual ponderings on this subject, the poor soul had come to feel that it could be no comfort, but much the reverse, to Val, to find out that she was his mother. Had any hope of the

fright when she thought of the possi-
bility, and made a vow to herself that
never, never would she expose Valentine
to this horror and shame. No she had
made her bed, and she must lie upon it.
But when he went away, the visionary
support which had sustained her visionary
nature the something out of herself
which had kept her wild heart satisfied —
failed all at once. It was as if a blank
had suddenly been spread before the eyes
that were always looking for what they
could find no more. She never spoke of
it never wept, nor made any demonstra-
tion of the change; but she flagged in
her life and her spirit all at once.
work, which she had got through with an
order and swiftness strangely at variance
with all the habits which her outdoor life
might have been supposed to form, began
to drag, and be a weariness to her. She
had no longer the inducement to get it
over, to be free for the enjoyment of her
window. Sometimes she would sit drear-
ily down in the midst of it, with her face
turned to the stream by a forlorn habit,
and thus Dick would find her sometimes
when he came in to dinner. "You are
not well, mother," the lad said, anxiously.

Her

"Oh yes, quite well- the likes of me is never ill- till we die," she would say, with a dreamy smile. "You have too much work, mother," said Dick; "I can't have you working so hard-have a girl to help you; we've got enough money to afford it, now I'm head man.' "Do you think I've gone useless, then?" she would ask, with some indignation, rous