Chapter V: Part 5

"Peter," she said in her soft "Englishey" voice, "God has been good to me. I have seen Curly, and he is not changed. I know it; we may not like what he has done, but he is not changed. He is good, Peter; he is our own dear good boy all the same. He didn't come in because he thought you wouldn't like it, but I had a long, beautiful talk with him in the lane. I felt somehow that I should see him--once more."

Again the ominous phrase, "Once more."

"Felicity," said the minister, "you have stood much longer than is good for you," and he picked her up in his arms and carried her to the sofa in the parlour.

She caught him round the neck and rubbed her soft cheek against his hair. "Why are you not surprised--and angry?" she asked with a little nervous laugh, and he felt how her whole body was trembling in his arms.

"Because I knew already," said the minister; and not one other word did he say on the subject that day, but he noticed that her pretty eyes had lost their look of strained expectancy and watchfulness, and in its place there was an expression of beautiful serenity and almost joyous content.

Although Edmund went to the Manse for his lessons, he was faithful always to the matutinal service of biscuits in Mr. Wycherly's room. He wouldn't have missed it on any account. Two mornings after their encounter with the "tiger-man," as they always called him, they sought Mr. Wycherly after breakfast to find him looking very grave and sad. He gave them their biscuits as usual, and turning to Edmund said: "You must not go to the Manse this morning, my dear boy. There is great trouble there. We have all lost a very dear friend--Mrs. Gloag." Mr. Wycherly paused, for he could not speak. The little boys looked very solemn, then Edmund said softly, "I suppose she has gone on."

*CHAPTER XIV*

*A PARTING*

O Royal and radiant soul,
Thou dost return, thine influences return
Upon thy children as in life, and death
Turns stingless!
W. E. HENLEY.

Whooping-cough was still bad in the village on the Sabbath following their famous tiger-game, and again Miss Esperance did not take her great-nephews to church.

Again, moreover, the Sunday was memorable, not so much because they did not attend church, as because Mr. Wycherly did.

The little boys knew there had been a funeral the day before. Mr. Wycherly had gone to it, and their aunt had sewn a black band upon the sleeve of each little white blouse. They felt solemn and important; and for once they would even have been glad to go to church in order to show this unusual adornment. When they discovered that not only were they to be left at home, but left at home without Mr. Wycherly, such immunity was shorn of all its more pleasing attributes.

They were sorry about Mrs. Gloag, with the curious, impersonal sorrow that children experience in considering the troubles of others. She was a kind lady, and they liked her. She knew many rhymes and funny stories, and was almost as good a playmate as that unequalled tiger-man. But they had not seen her often lately, and at present their chief concern was with the unusual and uncomfortable sense of depression that seemed in some subtle, indefinable fashion to separate them from their aunt and Mr. Wycherly.

And now, having gone to a funeral on Saturday, Mr. Wycherly was going to church on Sunday. Why was Mr. Wycherly going to church?

That was the question that grievously exercised the little boys, and perhaps Mr. Wycherly himself would have been hard put to it to explain his reasons.

There was the protective instinct, the feeling that he could not let Miss Esperance go alone, so small and sad and solitary: the desire to do something comforting: an equally strong desire to show his affectionate respect for Mrs. Gloag, and the hope that perhaps by this means he might to some small extent show his sympathy with the minister. And at the back of all these mixed motives and through every one of them there sounded the voices of habit and tradition; voices which every day of late had called more and more imperatively to Mr. Wycherly. In the old days it had been a matter of course that he should take part in any public ceremony; now, in spite of his long aloofness from any part or lot in the lives of his neighbours, he felt it incumbent upon him to make some open and public demonstration of his share in this common sorrow.

When he first came to live with Miss Esperance, Mrs. Gloag had always been kind and friendly, stopped him in the road when he would fain have passed her by, and yet always left him unconsciously cheered by her greeting. Few others had been kind and friendly then, and Mr. Wycherly did not forget.

It was surprising how many people remembered such things of her now. It seemed that every man, woman, and child in the village could and did tell of something kind Mrs. Gloag had done, of something merry and heartening she had said. People forgot now that she had sometimes laughed when it would have been more fitting to look grave. They only remembered that she had cheered the despondent, strengthened the weak-hearted, made peace where there were quarrels, and brought gaiety and good humour into homes where before there were gloom and discontent.

Not for years had the church been so full as on that Sabbath morning, that sunny Sabbath morning when Mr. Wycherly went to church with Miss Esperance.

The minister looked much as usual. His face was stern and set, though his eyes under the bushy, overhanging gray eyebrows were the eyes of a man who had slept but little. Yet his voice was strong and full, and he prayed and read the Bible with his customary earnestness and vigour.

The congregation were a little fluttered to notice that in the Manse pew there were three tall young men, and that the white-haired, Oxfordy gentleman who lived with Miss Esperance was in her seat, but otherwise the service was much as usual.

It was not until the time came for the sermon that there was throughout the congregation that little thrill of excited expectation which proclaims deep interest.

"What would be the minister's text?"

To most people it was a surprise: it was not even a whole text. The minister preached upon the four words, "Be pitiful, be courteous." His sermon was the shortest he had ever given in that church, lasting only half an hour.

Mr. Wycherly sat with his elbow on the desk in front of him, his white, slender hand shading his eyes.

Miss Esperance was visibly affected; and of the three young men in the Manse seat, one laid his head down on his crossed arms, but he assuredly was not sleeping.

When the service was over and Mr. Wycherly and Miss Esperance were walking home, she said timidly: "It was a beautiful discourse, don't you think?"

"I think," said Mr. Wycherly, "that he preached that sermon for his wife; and that it will be remembered when all his other sermons are forgotten. I am glad to have been there."

That afternoon the little boys took their Sunday picture-books into the garden and sat on the grass under the alder tree; Mr. Wycherly, too, sat in a garden chair reading a sober-looking calf-bound book.

Miss Esperance had returned from afternoon church, but she was so tired and upset that Elsa persuaded her for once to go and lie down in her room, and the children were warned not to disturb their aunt.

Edmund's book was a large Bible Alphabet with gaily-coloured pictures, which Miss Maggie Moffat had given him at the New Year. Montagu had brought out "Peep of Day," a work he detested, but choice on the Sabbath was limited in the house of Miss Esperance, so he looked at the "Child's Bible Alphabet" with Edmund, and so often had they pored over the volume that they were familiar with all the characters from Abraham to Zacchaeus.

Presently Edmund shut the book with a bang. "I shall know all these folks when I meet 'em, anyway," he said decidedly. "I've looked at 'em and looked: I've had enough of seeing them, Isaac and Noah and Jacob and Mrs. Potiphar and that dancing woman, Miriam--none of them very handsome, either," Edmund continued discontentedly. "Oh, I do wish the Sabbath was over, it's such a long, long day."

"I wonder," said Montagu musingly, "why the Bible people are always so ugly in pictures; so red and blue: real people aren't as ugly as that even if they are a bit plain. Can you tell how it is, Guardie, dear? D'you suppose they're really like the people in Edmund's book?"

"I expect," Mr. Wycherly said cautiously, laying down his "Alcestis" and smiling at Montagu's earnest upturned face, "that they were very like the people we see every day, some neither very handsome nor very plain. Some beautiful and delightful."

"I shall be disappointed," Edmund remarked, "if, after all, they turn out to be different from what they are in my book, after I've taken so much trouble to know them when Aunt Esperance covers the little poem at the bottom and the letter. You do think they'll be like they are here, don't you?" he asked anxiously.

"I fear not," Mr. Wycherly said, shaking his head. "We can't tell what they were like. You see, the artists who made the pictures in your book could only give their idea of the people they wished to represent----"

"Then they aren't kind of fortygraphs!" Edmund exclaimed aghast. "I sha'n't really know them when I meet them, after all--they may be quite different! What a shame!"

"I wish we might have the Theogony out on Sunday," Montagu grumbled. "The people there are pretty enough. Do you think we could, Guardie, dear?"

"I fear not. I don't think Miss Esperance would like it."

"Is your book a Sunday book?" Edmund asked severely.

"Well, no, perhaps not exactly; it is a very beautiful play."

"What's a play?"

"Something that can be acted."

"Is it wicked to act?"

"No, I don't think so--but there are people----"

"Why, then, did Elsa say the tiger-man was wicked?" Edmund interposed. "He's an actor, isn't he?"

Mr. Wycherly was spared an answer to this question, as at that very moment some one was seen coming through the garden toward them--a tall young man in black, who proved to be none other than the tiger-man himself.

The boys rushed at him, shouting joyfully. "Oh, tiger-man, have you come to play with us? You promised you would, you know."

"I've come to say good-bye," he said, as each child seized a hand and hung on to him. "I have to go to-night."

"But you'll have a little play with us first; just one? It's been such a long Sabbath, and it isn't nearly tea-time yet."

Edmund's voice was very piteous.

"Poor mites," said the tiger-man. "I'll tell you what we'll do. You go down to the bottom of the garden under the trees and wait for me for five minutes. Then I'll come to you and we'll do something--it mustn't be noisy--but we'll make some sort of a play. Just let me have five minutes with Mr. Wycherly here--see, there's my watch--when the five minutes are up you give me a call."

As he spoke he took off his watch and chain and gave it to Montagu. The little boys ran to the end of the garden and waited by the wall.

"He must have climbed over," Edmund said. "I suppose it isn't very high when your legs are so long."

"Edmund," said Montagu very seriously, "I don't think we ought to bother him to play. He looks very sorry. You see, his mother's just dead--perhaps he doesn't feel at all like playing. You see, before, when we had that lovely game, he was just going to see her--now----"

Edmund's face fell. The tiger-man's advent had seemed a direct interposition of Providence on his behalf. Now, it appeared that he was not to avail himself of it after all.

"Sha'n't you call him when it's the five minutes?" he asked.

"No," said Montagu, "it would be kinder not, don't you think?"

Edmund's mouth went down at the corners. "It's been so mizzable all day," he sighed. "Aunt Esperance is sorry, and Guardie is sorry, and now you're sorry, and say he mustn't play wiv me. How long must people keep on being sorry? He said he'd play his own self."

Montagu was puzzled. He sympathised with his small brother--it had been a long, dull day for him, too--but yet he felt that the tiger-man ought not to be bothered. Montagu was sensitive and sympathetic, and even as he had caught sight of the tiger-man walking up the path he realised that it was a different tiger-man from the one of a week ago who had rolled over and over in the grass so joyously.

He looked at the watch in his hand. "It's more'n five minutes now," he said. "You can call if you like, I sha'n't."

But Edmund did not call. Montagu moved nearer his little brother and put his arm round him. "We ought to be sorry for the tiger-man, you know," he said softly. "He's like Guardie and us now."

Edmund leaned against Montagu and sighed. It really was a very sad and puzzling day.

"Surely, it's more than five minutes," said a voice behind them, and there was the tiger-man, pale certainly, with red rims round his eyes, but evidently ready to play.

"Do you mind? Are you sure you don't mind?" Edmund asked eagerly. "If you'd rather not--we'd rather not, too."

The tiger-man sat down on the rough grass near the wall--it was one of his agreeable qualities that he was ready to sit down anywhere at any moment. He held out his hand to each of the little boys, and they sat down one on each side and cuddled up against him.

"You're jolly, decent little chaps," he said, "and I know just what you mean, but I'd like to keep my promise because--well, most of all, because she'd like me to. So now I'll try and be amusing."

And he was amusing. Edmund forgot his low spirits and rolled over and over on the grass in paroxysms of stifled laughter at the things the tiger-man did and said.

All too soon the game ended. The tiger-man put on his watch, and kissed both the little boys in farewell. "Good-bye," he said, "I'm afraid it will be some time before we meet again, but I sha'n't forget you."

"We sha'n't forget _you_. Good-bye, good-bye," called the little boys, watching the tiger-man as he vaulted lightly over the wall. Montagu ran after him. "I'd like to whisper," he said breathlessly.

The tiger-man leant over the wall, and Montagu caught him round the neck:

"Although we laughed and enjoyed it so," he whispered, "we _are_ sorry, we really are."

The tiger-man kissed Montagu once more, but this time he said nothing at all.

*CHAPTER XV*

*THE BETHUNE TEMPERAMENT*

For courage mounteth with occasion.--KING JOHN.

"It is curious, is it not," Miss Esperance said to Mr. Wycherly, "how entirely those two dear boys differ in character. Sometimes I think that Montagu must be like his mother's family. He is certainly not like ours."

"I am not sure that fundamentally Montagu is so very unlike you, Miss Esperance. In some ways, too, he strikes me as resembling Edmund, though not on the surface. I don't think that you need feel disturbed. Montagu is a Bethune _au fond_, although he may seem milder and perhaps--er--less strenuous than Edmund."

Miss Esperance shook her head, unconvinced.

"No," she said, "from all I remember of my brothers and myself and from what I know of my dear father, I don't think Montagu is one of us. Edmund is, absolutely, a Bethune for good and ill--and there's a great deal of ill, mind, in our characters. But Montagu is too reflective, too slow to act. He is not impulsive, like the rest of us, and look how serene he is! He is hardly ever in a temper, and the Bethunes have always been so hot-tempered and high-spirited."

They were sitting at table in the evening while Mr. Wycherly drank his wine, and he smiled as he looked at the pretty old lady opposite with the soft lamplight shining on her white hair: the old lady who laid claim to such violent characteristics with such calm assurance. He did not point out to her that it was her beautiful serenity that set so wide a gulf between her and more easily ruffled ordinary mortals: he said nothing, but he smiled, and Miss Esperance saw the smile.

"You must not think," she continued, "that I in any way regret Montagu's dissimilarity. He is a most kind and unselfish boy; a dear, dear boy. And I wouldn't have him different if I could. But he is not like my people. He has the scholar's temperament. He weighs and considers. He would never act upon impulse, and sometimes I wonder whether he is not lacking in the dash and courage that have always marked our race: those qualities that Edmund possesses in so marked a degree--together with so many others that are quite undesirable."

Mr. Wycherly ceased to smile. "Do you know," he said, "it is a most curious thing, and, I suppose, the result of association, but sometimes Montagu reminds me a little of myself when I was a boy. Of course it is extremely unlikely that he should resemble me in any way: yet our minds do tend to run in the same groove. But it's only our minds. Montagu has far more strength and tenacity of purpose than I ever had, and I believe that, should the necessity arise, he would show both dash and courage. The Bethune temperament is there, Miss Esperance, but in his case it is not roused to activity by little things."

Mr. Wycherly remembered this conversation next day when he was out walking with Montagu. Their way lay through the village, past some of the poorer cottages, and from one of these came Jamie Brown, a barefooted laddie, about Montagu's own age, but rather bigger.

As usual Montagu had hold of Mr. Wycherly's hand, and there was something in the sight of the two figures walking along so primly together that annoyed Jamie excessively.

Neither Edmund nor Montagu were allowed to play with the village boys: about this Miss Esperance was most firm and particular. But all the same Edmund knew and was hail-fellow-well-met with them all, and contrived many a sly game of "tippenny-nippenny" or "papes," and many a secret confab on his way to and from the Manse. They all liked Edmund, and Edmund liked them. He could talk broad Scotch, and did whenever he got the chance, although if his aunt heard him she severely discouraged his efforts, even going so far as to forbid the use of certain somewhat lurid, if expressive, adjectives. But Montagu, who spent so much of his time with Mr. Wycherly, was not drawn toward the village boys. Their loud voices and rough manners repelled him: he was naturally shy and held himself aloof. Hence he was despised and disliked as "Englishey" and stuck up.

Jamie Brown danced out into the middle of the road on his noiseless bare feet, and walked mincingly in front of Mr. Wycherly and Montagu, looking back over his shoulder from time to time to remark tauntingly: "This is you, mim's milk, like a puggie, a wee Englishey puggie in a red coatie jimp an' sma'--whaur's yer organ? Wull yon auld gentleman no gies a chune? Puggie! Puggie! wha's a wee puggie!"

Montagu turned very red, but said nothing. Mr. Wycherly had never in the smallest degree mastered the dialect of Burnhead, and was quite unconscious that Jamie's remarks were other than of the most friendly description. He regarded his gyrations with some surprise, but did not realise any offensive intention. Presently, however, Jamie began to stagger about the road like a drunken man, at the same time chanting raucously:

"Oxfordy, Oxfordy, Oxfordy, Sumph!
What'll ye get from a soo but a grumph?"

Then it was that Montagu felt a little tremor in his guardian's hand, and looking up, saw that his face was lined and drawn as with pain.

Now Mr. Wycherly was well aware that Jamie Brown could not by any possibility know of his past weakness through personal knowledge; for his "foible" had ceased to be a foible long before Jamie was born. Yet it was pain inexpressible that his old frailty could be made an instrument of persecution for Montagu. The love and admiration of the two little boys, who had come so unexpectedly and beneficently into his life, were very precious to him, and that anything could be done or said to lower him in their estimation or hurt them through his past infirmity, was little short of torture.

Montagu, who couldn't imagine why Jamie was reeling about the road in that idiotic fashion, understood well enough the insulting couplet, and saw that Mr. Wycherly was pained.

"I can't stand this any more," he said, dragging his hand from his guardian's; "he's got to stop it."

He ran forward, and with a bound leapt upon Jamie from behind, who, taken by surprise, went down with Montagu on the top of him. Over and over in the mud the boys rolled, kicking, scratching, thumping, doing everything, in fact, of a combative nature except bite.

Mr. Wycherly remained where he was, watching them. Mause would fain have hurled herself into the press, too, but he caught the old dog by the collar just in time, and had hard work to hold her, as she bounced and barked and choked in her efforts to get free. He did not feel called upon to interfere between the boys, for they were not ill-matched, and Jamie had assuredly been the aggressor. Presently, however, he saw that Montagu was uppermost, that he had got his adversary by the throat, and was deliberately bumping the boy's head on the ground, while he never relaxed his hold for an instant, and that Jamie was rapidly getting black in the face.

Still holding Mause, Mr. Wycherly ran forward, shouting, "Loose him, Montagu; let him go, I say. Don't you see you're throttling the boy? You'll choke him; let go, I say."

"I want to choke him," Montagu gasped, as Mr. Wycherly, still holding the struggling Mause with one hand, attempted to drag his ward off the prostrate Jamie with the other. "I want to kill him. I'd have done it, too, if you hadn't interfered."

"Nonsense," Mr. Wycherly said sharply. "Don't you know yet that you mustn't keep on hitting a man when he's down? Here, catch hold of Mause for me. Get up, boy!"

And he half lifted the recumbent Jamie, who, though somewhat limp, was beginning to assume a normal complexion.

Montagu glared at his foe like an angry terrier. "We haven't finished," he cried. "Let me get at him to box him some more. You hold Mause again. Come on!"

And Montagu, whose nose was bleeding, while one eye was rapidly disappearing in a tremendous bruise, danced up and down impatiently, in concert with the excited Mause.

But Jamie was holding his neck and gasping.

"I'll no' fecht nae mair wi' yon wee teeger," he said slowly. "He's gey an' spunkie," he added, "for all he's sae genty and mim. Ma certie! his hauns can tak a grup although they're sae wee."

"There, you see," said Mr. Wycherly. "He says that he has had enough, so, of course, you can't go on any more. Now you must shake hands with each other, for it's all over."

Frankly, and with no sort of grudge, Jamie held out his square, brown fist. "I'll no' ca' ye a puggie onny mair," he said handsomely.

Montagu was still eyeing his late foe with some hostility: but as his guardian had bidden him to shake hands he felt it must be the proper thing to do, so he held out his hand. "Perhaps," he said hopefully, "you'll fight with me again some day."

"Ah'm no' sae shure," Jamie replied cautiously, and in another minute was speeding on his swift, bare feet toward his mother's cottage.

Montagu, still standing in the middle of the road, was indeed a deplorable figure: covered from head to foot with mud and blood, with a singing in his ears, and an extremely sore eye, he looked about as disreputable an object as could be imagined. Mr. Wycherly stood back and regarded him curiously. "We must go home," he said, "and it is to be hoped that we shall not meet many people on the way. Here's a handkerchief; just try and mop that unfortunate nose of yours. What Miss Esperance will say, my dear Montagu, I really cannot imagine."

They turned homeward, and had not gone many yards when they met the Misses Moffat, who stopped, holding up their hands in horror at Montagu's appearance.

Mr. Wycherly had never yet spoken to them and would fain have passed them now with a courteous salutation. But it was not to be. They closed in upon him and Montagu, both asking at once what dreadful mishap had occurred.

Mr. Wycherly again lifted his hat. "The fact is," he said, "Montagu has been engaged in the rough and tumble. There has been a great deal of tumble and a fair amount of rough. But no serious damage has been done. I think, however, that the sooner he gets home and changes the better." And yet again lifting his hat and holding out his hand to Montagu, he prepared to go on his way.

But the Misses Moffat were not satisfied. "And you let him fight?" Miss Maggie exclaimed reproachfully. "Oh, sir! do you think it was right?"

"Yes, madam," Mr. Wycherly answered boldly. "I think it would have been wrong to interfere."

"But you did interfere," Montagu exclaimed in injured tones. "I'd have killed him if you hadn't."

"Killed who?" shrieked Miss Jeanie. "But this is dreadful----"

"I really think," Mr. Wycherly interposed, "that we must get back at once. Good-day to you--good-day."

And seizing Montagu's hand, he fairly ran from the Misses Moffat in the direction of Remote.

Miss Esperance met them at the gate. When she caught sight of Montagu, she, too, gazed in wonder and consternation, and ran out to them, crying, "What has happened? Has he been run over? Is he badly hurt?"

"This," said Mr. Wycherly, pointing to Montagu, "is the result, my dear Miss Esperance, of a sudden manifestation of--the Bethune temperament."

Miss Esperance flushed a most beautiful pink. She stooped and kissed her great-nephew's most uninviting-looking countenance.

"He has been fighting," she said quietly, "and I fear he has had the worst of it."

"That I didn't," the belligerent one exclaimed joyously. "I'd have killed him quite dead if Guardie hadn't stopped me. He wouldn't let me."

"Who was it?" Miss Esperance asked with breathless interest.

"Jamie Broun; he was rude. His father makes wheels and things, you know."

"Come and get cleaned, my dear, dear boy. It's very wrong to fight, but sometimes--in a good cause, it maybe necessary. Come away in."

And Miss Esperance walked up the garden path with her arm round Montagu's neck.

Presently she tapped at Mr. Wycherly's door. When she came in her gentle face was wreathed with smiles.

"I've just come to confess to you," she said, "that I feel you were right and I was wrong last night. There is no doubt whatever that Montagu is a real Bethune. In 1657 Archibald Bethune did with his own hands choke to death an Irish wrestler who had set upon him in a lonely inn in Forfarshire. The man was seven feet high, so the old chronicle says. I've just been looking."

"Won't you sit down, Miss Esperance?"

"No, I thank you, not now. I have several things to see to; but, dear friend, I felt that I must tell you that I recognise that your insight is deeper than mine. Montagu is a true Bethune: he will be a man of his hands even as the rest of our house."

"For my part," Mr. Wycherly said dryly, "I would rather fall into the hands of Edmund than those of Montagu when he is roused. Especially as it would appear to be an agreeable characteristic of the Bethunes to throttle their adversaries."

"We have always been a fighting race," Miss Esperance remarked complacently, and departed with pride in her port and satisfaction writ large upon her face.

Mr. Wycherly looked thoughtful. "And she the gentlest and tenderest of women!" he murmured. "How strange they are!"

That afternoon the Misses Moffat called to ask after Montagu.

They found him resting, with a bandaged eye, upon the sofa in his aunt's parlour, with Flaxman's "Theogony" open on his knees for his amusement. His head ached badly, but he was quite happy. He knew that in some way this exploit, although it entailed much destruction to garments and was altogether of an unlawful and unusual order, had not really grieved his aunt. She had lectured him gently, it is true, but she had been very kind as well, and had given him a whole bunch of raisins to console him when he was left at home--his appearance being unsuited just then to polite society--and she and Edmund drove over to see Lady Alicia.

Miss Maggie came and sat down beside his sofa, and after sundry searching inquiries after his various wounds, she divulged the real reason of her visit.

"I felt, my dear," said kind Miss Maggie, "that I must come and tell you a story, a wee story, I read just the other day in 'Wise Words.'"

"Thank you very much," Montagu said politely.

"It was told by a Quaker gentleman----"

"What's a Quaker, please?" Montagu interrupted.

"A very good man----"

"Are there many of them or only one?"

"I think there must be a good many, but that doesn't matter," Miss Maggie said hastily, rather flurried by these interruptions.

"I like to understand things as I go along. Guardie says you must never pass a word you don't understand. Yes, a Quaker gentleman, a very good man--what next?"

"Well, this Quaker gentleman had a class for boys, a Sunday class----"

"Was he a minister as well as a Quaker?" asked the incorrigible Montagu.

"No, no, he just taught them for kindness, and he was much pleased, because one day he asked his class whether they would rather kill a man or be killed themselves, and all of them, with one accord, every single boy, said he'd rather be killed himself than take the life of a fellow-creature."

Miss Maggie paused and looked at Montagu for admiration of these noble sentiments.

He shook his head vigorously. "I'm not like that," he said decidedly. "Why, I'd rather kill ten men than be killed myself--and I'd try to do it too, first."

*CHAPTER XVI*

*THE COMING OF THE COLONEL*

Soldier, soldier, home from the wars.

At Remote a box hedge separated the path leading to the back door from the trim front garden sacred to visitors. Edmund often played behind that hedge. It made good cover for tiger shooting and suchlike thrilling sport; and on this particular day he was in pursuit of a bear, a brown bear of terrific size and grizzliness.

It was a very still morning: Elsa and Robina were busy at the back hanging out clothes to dry. Mr. Wycherly and Montagu were, as usual, engaged in the study of Greek or Latin in the room upstairs. Miss Esperance had gone to see a sick woman in the village, and Mr. Gloag was away on a holiday. Therefore was Edmund free to amuse himself as best he could, provided he did not stir beyond the garden.

He was getting a little tired of his solitary pursuit of big game when he heard a horse's hoofs ringing sharply on the road, accompanied by a quite unfamiliar jingling. Both hoofs and jingling stopped at the green gate, and Edmund, peering through a hole in the hedge, saw a soldier, a most resplendent soldier, in dark blue uniform and a brass helmet with a white plume, dismount from a big black horse and push open the green gate, where he paused and whistled.

He was a tall man, with a brown, good-humoured face, and he waited evidently in the hope that some one would hear his whistle and come.

But no one came. Mr. Wycherly generally shut the window that looked out to the front as a preventive of interruptions.

The soldier whistled again loud and clear, then he began to sing a little song. He was evidently a patient man and didn't mind waiting. Edmund, his round face glued to the hole in the hedge, watched him with absorbed interest; noting carefully both words and tune of the song.

The soldier sang, not at all loudly, but quite distinctly and with a certain rollicking joviality that the child found most fascinating. Finally he opened the green gate and led his horse up the garden path to the front door, where he rang the bell.

Still no one came, and Edmund, greatly excited, darted out into the road and in at the gate till he, too, stood beside the waiting soldier.

"Good morning, sir," said the soldier. "I've got a note here for Miss Bethune from the Colonel. This 'ere 'ouse is Remote, ain't it?"

"Yes, sir," Edmund answered with solemn politeness, "but who's the Colonel?"

"Colonel Dundas, sir. Can you take the note, sir? I was to wait for an answer, but I can't seem to make anybody hear," and the soldier held out a square, white envelope to Edmund.

"I'll put it on the table inside," Edmund said. "My aunt is out, but please don't go away yet; I'd like to talk to you. Have you had a battle lately, and did you kill many enemies? And what are you? Are you a general or a major?"

The soldier laughed. "Well, sir, no, I ain't got that rank yet--I'm an orderly, sir."

"What's that?" asked Edmund.

"A private soldier, sir. Would you like a ride, little gentleman? I'll lift you up, and you can sit on the 'orse's back and I'll lead 'im down to the gate and a little way down the road, it you like, sir."

"You are a kind man," said Edmund gratefully. "I should like that so much."

And in what the soldier would have called a "brace of shakes" Edmund was seated on the back of the tall black charger and was riding down the path to the green gate.

Out into the road did he go and down the village street till they reached the corner where the highway leads to Edinburgh; there the soldier lifted him off, swung himself up into the saddle, and they parted with mutual expressions of esteem.

Edmund trotted back to the house. No one had missed him. Miss Esperance had not yet returned, and the square, white envelope still lay on the hall table unopened.

That day at dinner the little boys learned from their aunt that the Colonel of the cavalry regiment just come to Jock's Lodge was an old friend of hers, and was coming out to tea with them on the following day. They talked and thought of nothing else till bedtime. Next morning Edmund, still at a loose end, got tired of play in the garden by himself and invaded his aunt in her parlour, where she was busy mending Montagu's stockings.

He fidgeted round about Miss Esperance, dropping balls of wool and pricking his fingers with darning needles, finally upsetting a large box of pins: which his aunt commanded him to pick up and replace. This he did, and lightened his labours by suddenly bursting into song:

O there's not a king is so gay as me--
With my glass in my hand and my wench on my knee,
When I gets back to the old countrie
And the regiment's home again.

Edmund had a clear, loud voice, and could sing any tune on earth after he had heard it once.

Miss Esperance dropped the stocking she was darning, and exclaimed in horrified tones: "Edmund! My dear boy! Where in the world did you learn that song? _Never_ let me hear it again!"

"The soldier gentleman what brought the Colonel's letter was singing it that morning he came, and nobody answered the door to him. He waited ever so long. What's wrong with it, Aunt Esperance? D'you not like it?"

"Like it!" Miss Esperance repeated. "It's a shocking, low song, and quite unsuitable for the lips of a little boy."

"What's unshootable?" demanded the volatile Edmund, quite unabashed.

Miss Esperance was busy re-threading the darning-needle Edmund's surprising ditty had caused her to drop, and she did not reply at once.

"What's unshootable?" Edmund demanded again.

"Unsuitable," Miss Esperance corrected.

"Well, 'shootable' or 'sootable,' whichever it is; what does it mean, Aunt Esperance?"

"It means not fitting."

"Like my top-coat that's got too wee?"

"No, Edmund, I did not in this case refer to bodily things."

"Like boots, then?" Edmund persisted, his head on one side like an inquisitive sparrow's.

Miss Esperance detached her mind from her darning. "What I meant was," she said seriously, "that a vulgar and ugly song is distressing enough upon anybody's lips, but above all upon the lips of a child."

"I don't sing with my lips," Edmund objected. "What's a wench, Aunt Esperance?"

"A wench is a young woman," Miss Esperance reluctantly explained.

"Hooo!" Edmund cried scornfully. "I thought it was armour of some sort. I don't think I'd be very gay with a young woman on my knee--if she was as heavy as Robina, anyway."

"Hush, Edmund! I will not have you discuss that odious song any more. Forget it as quickly as you can; and I shall have to speak to Colonel Dundas about allowing his men to sing such songs before you!"

"He didn't know I was there," Edmund said loyally. "He was the very nicest man, and Elsa never answered the door. It's such a nice tune, too," he added regretfully.

Miss Esperance made no answer. Her busy needle flew in and out of the stocking, and she appeared absorbed in her beautiful darning.

Edmund had picked up all the pins, and he fidgeted about in silence for a minute more till he observed thoughtfully:

"So shootable's a vulgar song?"

"Child! You do nothing but misunderstand me to-day. I never said the song was suitable, I said it was unsuitable, which means inappropriate, and, in this case--improper."

"Were you ever a wench, Aunt Esperance?"

"Certainly not," Miss Esperance answered, with considerable heat.

"But you was a young woman once, Aunt Esperance?"

"That word, Edmund, is never applied to well-bred women at any time of life. It is not in itself a term of reproach, but it refers generally to--" Miss Esperance paused.

"What's it refer to?"

"Well--to women of the less refined classes. It is a South of England word--somewhat equivalent to our 'lassie."

"Which is the less refined classes, Aunt Esperance? Is they in a school?"

"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! You do nothing but ask questions to-day," Miss Esperance sighed. "Still, it is right you should understand. The less refined classes, Edmund, are such as have not had many advantages in the way of education or upbringing. Excellent persons often----"

"Perhaps yon wench was an excellent person," Edmund suggested hopefully.

Miss Esperance showed no inclination to discuss the possible merits of this young woman, and Edmund continued, "Had you many advantages, Aunt Esperance?"

"Certainly I had."

"Then you was never a wench?"

"Never!"

"Why should he like a wench to sit on his knee, Aunt Esperance? She'd be very hot and heavy."

"I really must refuse to discuss that song any more. Forget it as soon as you can, and never, never sing it again."

"He was such a nice man," Edmund persisted. "He had such a beautiful helmet."

"Perhaps," said Miss Esperance, "if you are both good boys I'll take you over one day to Pier's Hill to see the soldiers being drilled." And in this entrancing prospect Edmund forgot all about the "unsuitable" song.

"Aunt Esperance would like you should come to tea with us this afternoon, Guardie, dear."

It was Montagu who spoke. Lessons were over, but he had sought Mr. Wycherly again to deliver this message.

"It is most kind of Miss Esperance," said Mr. Wycherly. "I shall of course be delighted and highly honoured, but why am I to have this treat to-day, is it a birthday?--No--I know it isn't a birthday----"

"Colonel Dundas is coming. He knew my daddie, and he knew my grandfather, and Aunt Esperance is very anxious he should see you. She said so."

"Don't you think," Mr. Wycherly said nervously, "that I might be a little in the way? If Colonel Dundas is such an old friend, they will have many things to talk over. Wouldn't it be better for me to come some other time?"

"No, it wouldn't; I'm sure it wouldn't. Aunt Esperance said that she most pertikler wants Colonel Dundas to see you. Do you think he'll be able to sing, Guardie, dear?"

"To sing," Mr. Wycherly repeated. "Why should he sing at tea-time?"

"Well, the soldier Edmund saw (that gave him the ride--I wish I'd been there, I did hear something, but I thought it was just a butcher, perhaps), he could sing beautifully. Edmund said so. I thought perhaps all soldiers can sing."

"Perhaps they can," said Mr. Wycherly. "I really don't know. You can ask him when he comes. But not at tea-time, mind--that wouldn't be polite. It seems to me, Montagu, that, as Colonel Dundas is coming, we might ask him if there is any sergeant in his regiment who would teach you to box--properly. No choking, you know, or anything of that sort--you must learn to keep your temper when you fight."

"But, Guardie, dear, I should never want to fight at all if I kept my temper. It's when I'm angry I want to fight. What's the good of fighting with someone you're perfectly pleased with?"

"You won't feel perfectly pleased when you've been cuffed about the head pretty hard, but you must behave as if you were, and that's where the good training comes in. No one can box properly who is in a rage. It would be good for you to learn."

"Will Edmund learn?"

"Certainly, if you do; but he needs it less than you."

Montagu felt rather aggrieved. His guardian's approval was very dear to him, and Mr. Wycherly had never even indirectly referred to his encounter with Jamie Brown until this moment. The little boy did not enjoy the cold water thus thrown upon his exploit. He had felt more or less of a hero ever since, and here was Mr. Wycherly suggesting that he should be taught to "fight properly," and that he needed such tuition much more than Edmund, who was not nearly so well-behaved in general as he. Montagu was puzzled; but he was accustomed to take most things that his guardian said wholly upon trust, and being really humble-minded he came to the sorrowful conclusion that in some way he had not acquitted himself quite perfectly in his battle with Jamie Brown.

He was, however, dreadfully puzzled why anyone should care to fight for the mere pleasure of fighting, and that his guardian, most gentle and peace-loving of men, should suggest such unpleasing occupation as being both necessary and beneficial was quite incomprehensible. The coming of the Colonel was shorn of some of its splendour of anticipation in consequence.

At last tea-time arrived and with it the Colonel. He, too, rode over, but, to the great disappointment of the little boys, he was not in uniform as they had expected. It is true he wore beautiful breeches and gaiters: but he hadn't a weapon of any kind except a crop, nor did he wear a helmet, which grieved Edmund unspeakably.

All the same he was a kind and jolly gentleman. He had known Admiral Bethune and Miss Esperance when he was young; and, like the honest soldier he was, did not forget people who had been kind to him; he had also been friendly with poor Archie Bethune, and was interested in seeing his little sons: and there was also just a spice of curiosity in his visit. He had heard of Mr. Wycherly; of the curious charge undertaken by Miss Esperance; of the way that charge had, in his turn, undertaken the joint guardianship of her great-nephews.

What did the Colonel expect to see?

It would be hard to define. He had formed a hazy conception of some weak-minded man: amiable, incompetent, wholly lacking in those manly attributes that the Colonel considered essential. He wondered greatly what sort of training these little boys could have with such strange protectors: an old lady--a delightful old lady Colonel Dundas would have been the first to grant--and this eccentric, ineffectual recluse who was known to have made such a hopeless fiasco of his own life.

As he rode over to Remote the Colonel shook his head sorrowfully from time to time while he murmured to himself, "Poor little chaps!"

Not until they were all seated at the tea-table and Robina rang the bell outside did Mr. Wycherly come down.

As he came into the room the Colonel looked a little startled. He rose and shook hands cordially, and then proceeded to readjust his ideas. This was not at all what he had expected. A handsome man himself, he was quite ready to recognise good looks and, above all, distinction in another man; and Mr. Wycherly's was, even by the Colonel's standard, a striking personality.

It is impossible to dream perpetually when your companions for many hours out of each day are two exceedingly lively small boys with inquiring minds. Mr. Wycherly's expression had lost much of its vagueness; and although it was still a great effort for him to brace himself to meet strangers, he did it for the sake of the little boys and Miss Esperance. He did not want them to feel that he was in any way singular. What other people felt was a matter of the greatest indifference to him, and this gave his manner a certain poise and confidence that had been wholly wanting during his first years at Remote.

All the time during tea, while Colonel Dundas was consuming quantities of Elsa's thrice-excellent scones and conversing pleasantly with his hosts, something in the back of his brain kept reiterating, "I've been confoundedly misinformed about this man." And he found himself mentally accusing vague rumour of a pack of lies: "Making me think the fellow a sort of village idiot, while all the time he's a scholar and a gentleman--I'd like to know who was responsible for it in the first place."

After tea the Colonel asked if he might smoke a cigar in the garden, when it was found to be raining.

No one had ever smoked at Remote, and Mr. Wycherly felt rather nervous in offering his room for that purpose. But Miss Esperance pressed the Colonel to go and have his smoke there, and sent him up alone with Mr. Wycherly, while she, greatly to their indignation, detained the little boys with her.

"You'll come down and have a chat with us when you've finished your smoke, Malcolm?" she said cheerfully. So it came about that Mr. Wycherly actually entertained a man of about his own age and social standing in his room at Remote.

They seemed to have plenty to say, and the Colonel's big, jolly laugh rang out from time to time.

When he came down he took a small boy on each knee and poked fun at them: till, finally, out of a perfect farrago of nonsense, they elucidated the fact that they were to go over to Pier's Hill twice a week to be drilled and instructed in the noble art of self-defence: and that the Colonel would himself write to London that very night for the two smallest pairs of boxing-gloves made.

"Did Guardie ask you about it?" Montagu inquired anxiously.

"Will my soldier teach us?" Edmund demanded at the same instant.

"Who will take us?" both asked at once, and before the Colonel could disentangle the questions his horse was brought round by a lad engaged for the purpose that very afternoon. And the weather was discovered to be perfectly fine.

The whole family turned out to see him mount and ride off, for Montagu had rushed upstairs to fetch Mr. Wycherly, that he might not miss this entrancing spectacle.

The Colonel, as he reached the corner, looked back at the little group standing by the green gate and waved his hat to them: and for just a minute after the landscape seemed a little blurred.

"There are more ways than one of making men," he said to a brother officer at mess that night. "It's the quaintest household, but upon my soul, I'm not at all sure that those two capital little chaps are not rather to be envied."

The Colonel was not familiar with the writings of a certain monk of Flanders, or he might have remembered that it is love alone that "maketh light all that is burthensome and equally bears all that is unequal."

*CHAPTER XVII*

*MR. WYCHERLY GOES INTO SOCIETY*

Where is the man who has the power and skill
To stem the torrent of a woman's will?

While Mr. Gloag was away upon his holiday a strange minister and his wife came to look after the congregation at Burnhead. The inhabitants regarded them with more or less suspicion, for they came from a big town, and their ways were unaccustomed.

Mr. Dewar, the visiting minister, was mild and inoffensive, with no strongly marked characteristic of any sort; but Mrs. Dewar, a large, bustling lady of resolute character and little tact, succeeded during her first week in offending the majority of the leading members of the congregation.

Lady Alicia frankly avowed that "she couldn't endure the woman"; Miss Esperance said nothing; the Misses Moffat were encouraged by Lady Alicia's plain-speaking to go so far as to remark that Mrs. Dewar was very different from "our late dear Mrs. Gloag," while the village women in confabulation at their respective doors pronounced the newcomer to be "a leddy-buddy," which to the initiated subtly conveyed their opinion that she was not quite a lady.

Still, she was eager to do her duty in this small, benighted backwater, and she "visited" with zeal and frequency.

Her second visit to Remote was paid at a time when Mr. Wycherly happened to have gone downstairs to ask Miss Esperance a question; and Mrs. Dewar was shown into the parlour before he could escape. And even had such flight been possible, Miss Esperance held up a small, imploring hand as Robina announced the lady's name, which would have kept Mr. Wycherly at her side to face the wives of twenty ministers.

Mrs. Dewar was charmed. She had wanted all along to meet Mr. Wycherly, and she opened the conversation at once by shaking a large kid-gloved forefinger at him, remarking with ponderous jocosity:

"I didn't see you in the church last Sabbath--and how was that?"

Mr. Wycherly glanced despairingly at Miss Esperance, and she came to the rescue by remarking: "Mr. Wycherly is not a member of our church, Mrs. Dewar; he is an Episcopalian."

"Ah, but nevertheless," Mrs. Dewar persisted, "I think he should come and hear Mr. Dewar preach while he has the opportunity. It isn't often at a little place like this you get a man from such an important charge."

"I am sure Burnhead is very fortunate," murmured the ever-courteous Mr. Wycherly.

"You may well say that," the lady replied, highly satisfied, "and I must say that the place seems to me to be in great need of a little moral and intellectual quickening. Of course, poor Mr. Gloag has been much handicapped in his work by that poor invalid wife of his."

Miss Esperance always sat up very straight in her chair, but during Mrs. Dewar's speech her little figure attained to a positively awe-inspiring frigidity of displeasure, and Mr. Wycherly looked anxiously at their visitor as though he feared she might be turned into a pillar of salt there and then.

"On the contrary," Miss Esperance remarked, and her very voice seemed to have withdrawn itself to some inaccessible altitude, "by the death of his wife, dear Mr. Gloag has been deprived of such a perfect helpmeet as is seldom given to man. You must certainly have been strangely misinformed, Mrs. Dewar, to have acquired such a very mistaken conception of the true circumstances."

For a moment Mr. Wycherly felt almost sorry for Mrs. Dewar, but although she could not fail to be conscious that she had, in vulgar phrase, "put her foot in it," she was too thick-skinned and complacent to be crushed.