A SCHOLAR OF HIS COLLEGE.

CHAPTER I.

AT THE MOTE.

"THEN you truly and seriously mean to go back from your definite promise to me, Leuchars ?" and the speaker, a stout red-faced man of some sixty or more summers, scowled angrily as he looked at his companion.

Truth to say, the latter, for all his sweet temper and proverbial patience, was growing not a little weary of a discussion which seemed to promise only one possible ending, a quarrel between two lifelong friends, a quarrel which might last for a year or a month or a day-for so long, in fact, as Loder of Loders might choose to consider himself an aggrieved individual. For the man knew right well that, so far as his dealings with that most forbearing and longsuffering of mortals, Lord Leuchars, were concerned, the termination of a dispute about a matter of mere words and names lay practically at his own option. Wholly apart from a conviction, peculiar either to himself or to that character which thinks no evil of his fellow, a conviction that Dick Loder's faults, many and palpable,-faults of rough manners, still rougher tongue, overbearing temper, and unhappy tendency to mis

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construction of motives,-lay on the surface only, there were other circumstances which inhibited a man of his lordship's temperament from nursing a grievance against his neighbour Loder. He had shared to an unusual degree the feelings of love and respect which the whole neighbourhood had entertained for the late Mrs Loder, had argued to himself that so sweet a woman would never have bestowed her love upon a wholly unworthy object, and had never forgotten or regretted the promise made to her on the last occasion he had seen her, the promise that he would always do all that lay in his power for her two sons.

"Of course they will have their father, poor boys; but there," and she sighed, "you will do what you can for them, dear friend?"

"They shall be to me, so far as it is possible, as if they were my own boys. You may make your mind easy on that point. I only wish I could do more."

And there was one load the less on the uncomplaining woman's heart when she turned her face to the wall and died on that self-same night.

Right loyally the man kept his word, for the dead woman's sake, and for her sons' sake, extending a forbearance to the father, which that ungracious individual taxed to a full extent, -taxed perhaps all the more heavily because in his heart of hearts he knew it to be practically inexhaustible.

And yet, in justice to the man Loder be it said, there was not wanting evidence that, somewhat after the fashion of the pitman who is ready to accept as a personal defiance a kick levelled by a stranger at the dog which he himself habitually maltreats, he appreciated Lord Leuchars' good services to his family. For if on occasion he allowed himself the privilege of abusing that nobleman in private, a visitor at Loders who had stigmatised some action of his lordship as mean and illiberal was roughly warned that a man who made such remarks in his host's hearing would find his room more welcome than his company in that house.