Wayfaring Men. Lyall Edna

masks a raven,

      Each sin some colour hath it to adorn.

      Hypocrisy, Almighty God doth scorn.”

      Wm. Drummond, 1616.

      Dinner proved a trying meal that evening, although Sir Matthew and Mr. Marriott exerted themselves to talk, and were both of them very kind to their small companion. Afterwards they adjourned once more to the study where for the sake of the old lawyer a fire had been lighted.

      “The nights are still cold,” he said drawing a chair towards the hearth, and warming his thin white hands; “May is but a treacherous month in spite of the good things the poets say of it. I understand that your father’s illness was caused by a chill,” he added, glancing kindly at Ralph.

      “He caught cold one night when they sent for him down in the village,” said Ralph, tears starting to his eyes. “He was called up at two o’clock to see a man who was dying: there was an east wind, he said it seemed to go right through him. But then you know he had been very much troubled because of his losses; for the last ten days he had scarcely eaten anything, and had slept badly.”

      Sir Matthew paced the room restlessly, but when he spoke his voice was bland and calm.

      “A noble end!” he said, “dying in harness like that; carrying comfort to the dying and then lying down upon his own death-bed; a very noble end.”

      Something in the tone of this speech grated on Ralph, he shrank a little closer to the lawyer.

      “Why do I hate him?” thought the boy. “He’s going to send me to Winchester with his own money, I ought to like him, but I can’t—I can’t!”

      At that moment old Mrs. Grice appeared at the door asking to speak with Mr. Marriott. He followed her into the hall returning in a minute or two and approaching Ralph.

      “My boy,” he said, laying a kindly hand on his shoulder, “if you want to see your father’s face again it must be now.”

      Together they went up the dimly lighted staircase to the room overhead, Sir Matthew following slowly and with reluctance, a strange expression lurking about the corners of his mouth. Many thoughts passed through his mind as he stood looking down upon the still features of his dead friend; if the pale lips could have spoken he well knew they might have reproached him; and yet it was less painful to him to look at the stern face of the dead, than to watch the grief of the little lad as, through fast falling tears he gazed for the last time on his father’s face. It was a relief to him when the old lawyer drew the boy gently away, and persuaded him to return to the study fire.

      “I will be good to his son,” thought Sir Matthew as he looked once more at the silent form. “I will make it up to Ralph. He shall have the education his father would have given him. And then he must shift for himself, I shall have done my duty, and he must sink or swim. The very sight of him annoys me, but it will be only for a few years, and, meantime, I must put up with it.”

      So Ralph for the last time slept in the only home he had ever known, and woke the next day to endure as best he might all the last painful ceremonies through which it was necessary that he should bear his part. When the funeral was over he left Sir John Tresidder to talk with the lawyer and Sir Matthew, and drew Mab away into a sheltered nook of the walled kitchen garden where stood a rabbit-hutch.

      “These are the only things left,” he said, mournfully. “Should you care to have them, Mab? I should like them to be at Westbrook for I know you would be good to them. Rabbi Ben Ezra is the best rabbit that ever lived, and he’ll soon get to care for you. Sarah Jane is rather dull, but I suppose he likes her, and she doesn’t eat her little ones or do anything horrid of that sort like some rabbits.”

      “I will take no end of care of them,” said Mab; “but it seems a pity that you should leave them. Could you not take them with you?”

      “If I were going to live with Mr. Marriott I wouldn’t mind asking leave,” said Ralph, “but there’s something about Sir Matthew—I don’t know what it is—but one can’t ask a favour of him. I’d far rather give up the rabbits.”

      “Perhaps you are right,” said Mab. “And by the bye Ralph, let me have your new address, you are to live with your guardian are you not?”

      “They say Sir Matthew is not exactly my guardian. But father’s will was made many years ago and he was named as sole executor, and father wrote to him the day before he died asking him to see to me. Here comes the man to say your carriage is ready.”

      “Very well,” said Mab. “And tell Mrs. Grice I will send over for the rabbits. Good-bye, dear old boy. Don’t forget us all.”

      She stooped down, and for the first time in her life kissed him, and Ralph having watched at the gate till the carriage was out of sight, suddenly felt a horrible wave of desolation sweep over him, and knew that he could not keep up one minute longer. Running down the road he fled through the churchyard never stopping till he found himself in a lovely sheltered fir grove—his favourite nook in the whole park; and here, while the nightingales, and the cuckoos, and the thrushes sang joyously overhead, he threw himself down at full length on the slippery pine needles that covered the warm dry ground, and sobbed as though his heart would break. They had always called this particular nook the “Goodly Heritage,” because whenever friends had been brought to see it they had always said to the Rector: “Ah, Denmead, your lines are fallen in pleasant places.” Poor Ralph felt that this saying was no longer true, he thought that the pleasantness had forever vanished from his life, and the prospect of going forth into the world dependent for every penny upon a man whom he vaguely disliked was almost more than he could endure. The boy had a keenly sensitive artistic temperament, but luckily his father’s strenuous endeavours had taught him self-control; he did not long abandon himself to that passion of grief but pulled himself together and began to pace slowly through the grove crushing into his hand as he walked a rough hard fir-cone. And then gradually as he breathed the soft pine scented air, and watched the sunbeams streaking with light the dark fir trunks, and glorifying the silvery birch trees in a distant glade which sloped steeply down to a little murmuring brook, he realised that the past was his goodly heritage, his possession of which no man could rob him, and in thankfulness for the home which had been so happy for thirteen years he set his face bravely towards the dark future.

      “Waterloo, first single, a child’s ticket,” said Sir Matthew Mactavish entering the booking-office an hour or two later.

      “But I am thirteen,” said Ralph quickly.

      “Then he must have a whole ticket,” said the official, and Sir Matthew frowned but was obliged to comply.

      “You are so absurdly small,” he said glancing with annoyance at his charge as they passed out on to the platform, “you might very well have passed for under twelve.”

      Ralph felt hot all over, partly because no boy likes to be told that he is small, partly because he was angry at being reproved for not standing calmly by to see the railway company cheated. How could it be that a man as wealthy as Sir Matthew could stoop to do a thing which his father in spite of narrow means would never have thought of doing? He could as soon have imagined him stealing goods from a shop as attempting to defraud in this meaner, because less risky, fashion. However, Mr. Marriott happily diverted his thoughts just then.

      “Are you fond of Dickens?” he said kindly. “Have you read his ‘Tale of Two Cities,’ or his ‘Christmas Tales?’”

      Ralph had read neither, and was soon leaning back in his corner of the railway carriage, forgetful of all his wretchedness, cheered and fascinated, amused and filled with kind thoughts by the story of Scrooge, and Marley’s ghost, and Tiny Tim, and the Christmas turkey.

      It was with a pang of regret that he bade old Mr. Marriott farewell when they reached London, and illogically yet naturally enough he felt far more grateful for the parting sovereign and the kindly glance which the lawyer bestowed on him, than for his adoption by Sir Matthew. A sense of utter desolation stole over him as Mr. Marriott disappeared,