they will come looking for himand they will find him—and you too-and you too!"

"What's the meaning of all this fuss, mother-me too, as you say?" "Well," said Mrs Ogilvy, "it is perhaps not extraordinary-my only son; but I've no wish that harm should come to him-oh, not in this house, not in this house! If he would but take warning and go away where he would be safer than here! I've been in Edinburgh to ask my old friend, and your father's friend, and your friend too, Robbie, what could be done-if there was anything that could be done."

"You have gone and betrayed us, mother!"

"I have done no such thing!" cried Mrs Ogilvy, raising herself up with a flush of indignation"no such thing! It was Mr Somerville who brought me the news first, before you appeared at all. He was to hurry out to that weary America to defend you-or send a better than himself: that was before you came back, when we thought you were there still, and to be tried for your life. I was going myself," she said, suddenly faltering and breaking down.

"You would not have gone, mother," said Robbie, with a certain flash of self-appreciation and bitter consciousness.

You are just good for nothing in this bonnie world that God has made--except to put good meat into you that other folk have laboured to get ready, and to kill the blessed days He has given you to serve Him in, with your old books, and your cards, and any silly things that come into your head. I have seen you throwing sticks at a bit of wood for hours together, and been thankful sometimes that you were diverting yourselves like two bairns, and no just lying and lounging about like two dogs in the warmth of the fire. Oh, Robbie, what it is to me to say that to my son! and all the time the sword hanging over your heads that any day, any day may come down!"

"By Jove, the old girl's right, Bob!" said a voice behind. Lew had become curious as to the soft murmur of Mrs Ogilvy's voice, which he could hear running on faintly, not much interrupted by Robbie's deeper tones. It was not often she "preached," as they said

indeed she had seldom been allowed to go further than the mildest beginning; but Rob had been this time caught unprepared, and his mother had taken the advantage. Lew came in softly, with his lips framed to whistle, and his hands in his pockets. He had already picked his comrade out of a sudden Slough of Despond, caused by alarm at the declaration of the visitor, which, to tell the truth, had made himself very uneasy. It would not do to let the mother complete the discouragement: but this adventurer from the wilds had a candid soul; and while Robert stood sullen, beat down by what his mother said, yet resisting it, the other came in with a look and word of acquiescence. "Yes, by Jove, she was right!" It did not cost him much to acknow

ledge this theoretical justice of reproof.

"The difficulty is," he added calmly, "to know what to do in strange diggings like these. They're out of our line, don't you know. I was talking seriously to him there the other day about doing a stroke of work: but he wouldn't hear of it-not here, he said, not in his own country. Ask him; he'll tell you. I don't understand the reason why."

Mrs Ogilvy, startled, looked from one to another: she did not know what to think. What was the stroke of work which the leader had proposed, which the follower would not consent to? Was it something for which to applaud Robbie, or to blame him? Her heart longed to believe that it was the first that he had done well to refuse but she could only look blankly from one to another, uninformed by the malicious gleam in Lew's eyes, or by the spark of indignant alarm in those of Robbie. Their meaning was quite beyond her ken.

"If you will sit down," she said, "both of you, and have a moment's patience while I speak. Mr Lew, I am in no way your unfriend."

"I never thought so," he said: on the contrary, mother. You have always been very good to me."

He called her mother, as another man might have called her madam, as a simple title of courtesy; and sometimes it made her angry, and sometimes touched her heart.

"But I have something to say that maybe I have said before, and something else that is new that you must both hear. This is not a safe place for you, Mr Lew-it is not safe for you both. For Robbie, I am told nobody would meddle with him-alone; but his home here gives a clue, and is a danger to

you-and to have you here is a danger for him, who would not be meddled with by himself, but who would be taken (alack, that I should have to say it !) with you."

"I think, Bob," said Lew, "that we have heard something like this, though perhaps not so clearly stated, before."

He had seated himself quite comfortably in the great chair which had been brought to the parlour for Robbie on his first arrival,—and was, as he always was, perfectly calm, unruffled, and smiling. Robbie stood opposite in no such amiable mood. His shaggy eyebrows were drawn down over his eyes: his whole attitude, downlooking, shifting from one foot to the other, with his shoulders up to his ears, betrayed his perturbation and disquiet. Robbie had been

own

brought to a sudden stop in the fascination of careless and reckless life which swept his slower nature along in its strong current. Such a thing had happened to him before in his intercourse with Lew, and always came uppermost the moment they were parted. It was the sudden shock of Mrs Ainslie's announcement, and his friend's apparently careless reception of it, which had jarred him first: and then there was something in the name of mother, addressed to his mother by a stranger-which he had heard often with quite different feelings, sometimes half flattered by it-which added to his troubled sense of awakening resistance and disgust. Was he to endure this man for ever, to give up everything for him, even his closest relationship? All rebellious, all unquiet and miserable in the sudden strain against his bonds, he stood listening sullenly, shuffling now and then as he changed from one foot to another, otherwise quite silent, meeting no one's eye.

"Well," said Mrs Ogilvy, her voice trembling a little, "I am perhaps not so very clear; but this other thing I have to say is something that is clear enough and new too, and you will know the meaning of it better than me. I have been to-day to the gentleman who was the first to tell me about all this— and who was to have sent out-to defend my son, and clear him, if it was possible he should be cleared. Listen to me, Robbie! That gentleman has told me to-day-that there is an American officer come over express to inquire- It will not be about Robbie - they will leave him quiet-think, Mr Lew-it will be for

"For me, of course," he said, lightly. "Well! if there's danger we'll meet it. I like it, on the whole-it stirs a fellow's blood. We were getting too comfortable, Bob, settling down, making ourselves too much at home. The next step would have been to be bored-eh? won't say that process hadn't begun."

،

Sir," said Mrs Ogilvy, "you will not say I have been inhospitable, or grudged you whatever I could give

"Never, mother," he said. "You've been as good as gold." He had risen from his seat, and begun to walk about with an alert light step. The news had roused him; it had stirred his blood, as he said. "We must see about this exit of yours-subterraneous is it? out of the Castle of Giant Despair -no, no, out of the good fairy's castle, down into the wilds. You must show me this at once, Bob. If there's a Yank on the trail there's no time to be lost."

"There is perhaps no time to be lost but not for him, only for you. My words are not kind, but my meaning is," cried Mrs Ogilvy. "It is safest for you not to be

with him, and for him not to be with you. Oh, do not wait here till you're traced to the house, till ye have to run and break your neck down that terrible road, but go while everything is peaceable! Mr Lew, you shall have whatever money you want, and what clothes we can furnish, and and my blessing-God's blessing."

"Don't you think," he said, turning upon her, "you are undertaking a little too much? God's blessing upon a fellow like me— that has committed every sin and repented of none, that have sent other sinners to their account, and wronged the orphan, and all that. God's blessing!"

He was standing in the middle of the room, in which he was so inappropriate a figure, with his back to the end window, which was towards the west. It was now late in the afternoon, and the level rays pouring in made a broad bar across the carpet, and fell upon one side of his form, which partially intercepted its light and cut it with his tall outline. Mrs Ogilvy put her hands together with a cry.

"What is that? What is it? Is it not just the blessed sun that He sends upon the just and the unjust never stopping, whatever you have done-His sign held out to you that He has all His blessings in His hand, ready to give, more ready than me, that am a poor creature, no fit to judge? Oh, laddie-for you're little more-see to Him holding out His hand!"

He had turned round, with a vague disturbed motion, not knowing what he did, and stood for a moment looking at the sunshine on the carpet, and his own figure which intercepted it and received the glory instead. For a moment his lip quivered; the lines of his face moved as if a wind had blown

over them; his eyes fixed on the light, as if he expected to see some miraculous sight. And then he gave a harsh laugh, and turned round with a shrug of his shoulders. "It's pretty," he said, "mother, as you put it: but there's no time to enter into all that. I've perhaps got too much to clear up with God, don't you know, to do it at a sitting; but I'll remember, for your sake, when I've time. Eh? where were we before this little picturesque incident? You were saying I should have money to pay my fare, &c. Well, that's fair enough. Make it enough for two, and we'll be off, eh, Bob and trouble her no

But Robbie did not say a word. It was not any wise resolution taken; it was rather a fit of temper, which the other, used to his moods, knew would pass away. Lew gave another shrug of his shoulders, and even a glance of confidential criticism to the mother, as if she were in the secret too. "One of his moods," he said, nodding at her. "But, bless you! when one knows how to take him, they don't last." He touched her shoulder with a half caress. "You go and lie down a bit and rest. You're too tired for any more. We'll have it all out to-night, or at another time."

"I am quite ready now- -I am quite ready," she cried, terrified to let the opportunity slip. He nodded at her again, and waved his hand with a smile. "Come along, Bob, come along; let us leave her in quiet. To-night will be soon enough to settle all thatto-night or another time." He took Rob by the arm, and pushed his reluctant and half- resisting figure out of the room. Robert was sullen and indisposed to his usual submission.

"Let me go," he said, shaking off the hand on his arm; "do you think I'm going to be pushed about like a go-cart?"

"If you're a go-cart, I wish you'd let me slip into you," said the other. It was not a very great joke, but Robert at another moment would have hailed it with a shout of laughter. He received it only with a shrug of his shoulders now.

"I wish you'd make up your mind and do something," he said. "I have the first thing is to see who that woman is"A woman! when you've got to run for your life."

"Do you think I mean any nonsense, you fool? She's not a woman, she's a danger. Man alive, can't you see? She'll have to be squared somehow. And look here, Bob," he said suddenly, putting his arm through that of his friend's, who retained his reluctant attitude-" don't sulk, you ass

ain't we in the same boatget all you can out of the old girl. We'll have to make tracks, I suppose - and a lot of money runs away in that. Get everything you can out of her. may cool down and repent, don't you see? Strike, Bob, while the iron's hot. The old girl

She

"Look here, I'll not have her called names; neither mother, as if you had any right to her-nor -nor any other. We've had enough of that. I'll not take any more of it from you, Lew!"

Oh, that's how it is!" said the other coolly, with a sneer. "Then I beg to suggest to you, my friend Bob, that the respectable lady we're talking of may repent; and that if you're not a fool, and won't take more energetic measures, you'll strike, don't you see, while the iron is hot."

Rob gave his friend a look of

sullen wrath, and then disengaged his arm and turned away.

"You'll find me in Andrew's bower, among the flower-pots," Lew called after him, and whistling a tune, went off behind the

house to the garden, where in the shade Andrew kept his tools and all the accessories of his calling. He had no good of his ain toolhouse, since thae two were about, Andrew complained every day.

The Hewan was very quiet and silent that afternoon. Mrs Ogilvy perhaps would not have recognised the crisis of exhaustion at which she had arrived, had it not been for the remarks of the stranger within her doors, the unwelcome guest whom she was so anxious to send away, and who yet had an eye for the changes of her countenance which her son had not. He took more interest in her fatigue than Robbie, who did not remark it even now, and to whom it had not at all occurred that his mother should want care or tenderness. She had always given it, in his experience; it did not come into his mind. But, tutored by Lew, Mrs Ogilvy felt that she could do no more. She went to her room, and even, for a wonder, lay down on her bed, half apologising to herself that it was just for once, and only for half an hour. But the house was very quiet. There was no noise below to keep her watchful. If there were any voices at all, they came in a subdued murmur from the garden behind, where perhaps Robbie was showing to his friend the breakneck path down the brae to the Esk, which nobody had remembered during the many years of his absence. It had been his little mystery which he had delighted in as a boy. There was no gate opening on it, nor visible mode of getting at it. The little gap in the hedge through which as a boy he had squeezed himself so often was all concealed by subse

quent growth, but Robert's eyes could still distinguish it. Mrs Ogilvy said to herself, "He will be showing him that awful roadand how to push himself through." She felt herself repeat vaguely "to push himself through, to push himself through," and then she ceased to go on with her thoughts. She had fallen asleep; so many times she had not got her rest at night— and she was very tired. She fell asleep. She would never have permitted herself to do so but for these words of Lew. He was not at all bad. They said he had taken away a man's life-God forgive him!-but he saw when a woman was tired-an old woman—that was not his mother: may be-if he had ever had a mother- And here even these broken half-words, that floated through her brain, failed. She fell asleep-more soundly than she had slept perhaps for years.

The thoughts that passed through the mind of the adventurer in his retreat in Andrew's tool-house could not have been agreeable ones, but they are out of my power to trace or follow. Women are perhaps more ready to see their disabilities in this way than men. A man will sometimes set forth in much detail, as if he knew, the fancies, evanescent and changeful as a dream, of a girl's dawning mind, putting them all into rigid lines of black and white. Perhaps he thinks the greater comprehends the less: but how to tell you what was the course of