THE CLUTCH OF CIRCUMSTANCE; OR A CHANGED HORIZON.

Otago Witness, Issue 2928, 27 April 1910, Page 70

THE CLUTCH OF CIRCUMSTANCE; OR A CHANGED HORIZON.

By Ethel Turner.

THE NOVELIST.

JAle Rights Reserved.j CHAPTER IY.—AT DAVID’S.

AVID'S cottage, in the time of David himself, was merely one of the commonplace, weatherboard, mud-coloured places with which aU Australian country towns are at first bespattered, until with leisure and the accumulation of money, there grows up tne feeling for architecture on a more artistic and indivadual plan. It had been possessed of the customary front verandah, the narrow hall with two circumscribed rooms on either side of, it, and the kitchen with another small room or two at the rear, that made it of thq identical pattern that was used in the making of three parts of the cottages in Wyama; as if houses were of just "about the same importance to the scheme of life as Crimean shirts, and might as readily be drafted out by the hundred dbzen; and scattered around, "ready made." But Ines had happened along just as David had come up, sulky at the nonletting of his cottage, to'put it in the painter's hands, and see if " redding" it up a little would find-a tenant. It is possible that David had latertt artistic possibilities quite unsuspected by h u S T ife ' But lilS J u ' st aljso that he was a more human man, as well as a landlord, and Ines had turned her eyes upon him. Any way, before he went back to his shop-keeping in the city he was committed to several improvements that afterwards, in colder blood, he hardly liked! to fell Mrs David! about. For instance, he had consented to letting Ines have it all her own way with the painting. Let her choose her colours as she would, which permission alone would have horrfied Mrs David, who knew as well ae anyone that to expect a gjirl not quite twenty, to select durable colours would be to expect a. miracle. Then Ines had demonstrated to David how sorely she needed air—that, in fact, she and her father simply could not breathe without air, though so many of the other people in the village seemed so constituted that they were able to do so hi their homes. And she had wheedled him into taking some partitions down one that made the hall, for 'nstanoe, and the one between the two rooms that had been sitting room and dining room. This -jave her, although it opened directly on to the front door, a large and airy apartment that delighted her, although David looked at it with many misgivings when it was done. "But I thought young ladies like you," he said, "liked to have drorin' room and hall and dining room all separate. It's the first thing a poor woman thinks of, having them separate, after she's had to get along in one room for everything." " Oh, we'll .manage," said Ines joyfully, and her eyes sparkled so delightfully at the sight of ner big room that David dismissed his qualms, and consoled! himself by recollecting that the partitions could go' back when these people left and he got everyday tenants again. He even added a French window at the far end of the room, and with the despised partitions constructed beyond it- a kind of summer room or verandah where the paralysed! artist might have has sofa and be in the sunlight all day. So when Mrs Wharton and her daughters stepped on the verandah and found the front door open to all the winds of heaven, they found instead of the dead little passage they were accustomed to find in such houses the pleasantest of rooms spread out before them. The plastered walls were distempered in a cool and! delightful shade of green, except for a deep frieze of cream, on which Ines- had herself painted here and there in swift, telling strokes a loose, trailing pattern of nasturtiums and green leaves. Cieam curtains hung fresh and untortured at the windows, a light stencil pattern of nasturtium leaves defining their borders.

The floor was polished, and had rugs her© and there of green and white colourin c. For the rest a furniture dealer come to appraise would have found the room a tragedy, and gone away with tears in his eyee. For there was nothing but a low divan piled with cushions in covers soft in texture and colouring, a few chairs, a low bookcase, a little round table under one window, and a larger one, square, under another.

On the walls pictures in plenty:—delightful "bits" of foreign towns; an alp, gleaming white out of darkness; a Spanish child face with inscrutable eyes and babyish lips; a Venetian housefront, with its feet in green water that was exquisitely patched with shadow. None of the pictures were of any great value, for Erwin, had never been much more than a pretty trifler with the brush, but they were full of tender memories and delights for themselves. Flowers, too, there were, bare and there—tawny and gold and crimson velvet nasturtiums, liftting burning faoes out of shallow brass bowls. Cade looked at their beauty in surprise. At Wendover House, where the rose garden never failed and the orchid house gave freely of its treasures they had never thought of gathering "uch things as nasturtiums for the vases. But here came the young mistress of the house—after they had vappe** some half-dozen times. "Oh! I am so very sorry," she .said; "it is so hot, too. The bell is broken, and I have not had it mended yet." She found them comfortable seats, produced palm leaves, and set * simple punkah in. motion. Mrs Wharton unburdened her mind at onoe of the defaulting Chinaman—she had to talk of something, and all her mina at the moment was concentrated on lettuces. Besides, it was as well the girl should know that the new neighbour hart undesirable qualities. Then Ines found that she, too, had been unwittingly "undesirable " : she had' kept John from the Wendover lettuce bed the whol<* i* last week. " But come and see what he has done," she said, after she had been graciously forgiven for not having known. '' Oh ! I am going to have such a lovely garden. I lie awake nearly every night planning it. Isn't gardening lovely? I've never had a big one to myself before, thougn I've done wonders with window-boxes and little beds." Mrs Wharton was almost conquered, Cade and Elizabeth took but the most tepid interest in gardening,- but with herself it was an all-absorbing passion This eager face, all aglow with the subject, warmed her heart. She went outside again into the sunshine witb her young hostess, and listened to the soaring plans as they walked round the domain. Here was going to be a rose bed, cream and yellow rcees only, No earth was to show at all—nothing but\ a carpet of deep pansies around the roses' feet. Delphiniums were going into this bed — all the sweet range of tender blues, and for their carpet lobelia. ' Over that archway wisteria was already growing. Did not Mrs Wharton think' a coppery polyanthus planted on the other side would make a lovely tangle in the spring? That thin ring-barked gum tree, with its branches all lopped close, was it not an eyesore in a garden? But here were a crimson and a white rambler planted at the base, and they were to be trained to make of it a pillar of fire and • snow. This long low dividing wall of crude field stones—did it not offer itself to a delicious scheme of small creeping things—periwinkle, mosses, lichens, Virginian creeper? How could people have lived here and never done anything to it yet? Mrs Wharton entirely forgot her lettuces —forgot that her man waiting outside had' those fowls to pluck when he went home. ■She poured out advice; threw what little cold water was necessary on the kindling schemes, but offered other schemes in their place. Such a spot was too exposed for delphiniums, but what about ten-week stocks in all the mauve gradations. That corner was too shady for clumps of daffodils; but what about lilies of the valley? " Too dear," said Ines decidedly. " X looked them up in the catalogue, and they were 10s a dozen. We are only allowing ourselves a pound for all the spring bulbs." x '' An ;d quite enough, too,' said the old lady—" far too much, indeed. You will send no more orders to the seedsman, my dear, till we have seen that Wendover cannot supply you. I have twice as many lilies of the valley as I need." In the background Cads and Elizabeth, profoundly uninterested, sighed softly, and recalled Ines to her duties. She carried them back into the coolness of her green and white room, and without leaving them produced the tea things. Cade and Elizabeth watched her in a fascinated way; their own belongings, that had always 60 entirely satisfied them, seemed suddenly clumsy, ugly—almost early Victorian. Their very frocks dissatisfied them; their good linen coats and skirts made by an expensive tailor. Yet what did Ines wear» It was only a white muslin, with a pale blue sprier in it here and there. A blue ribbon made her waist-belt; a blue ribbon was threaded through the little muslin collar and knotted at the neck. A cluster of pink live roses was tucked into her waist ribbon. " She's like a girl in a book or a poem or a picture," thought Elizabeth, watching her enviously. "She looks as if she has never seen or heard anything u.o-ly in her whole life. I wonder has she? ° I wonder what her life has been to make her like this?" Later, when Mr Erwin waked from his afternoon sleep, and was able to see the visitors on his sunny verandah for a little time, Cade put a question brusquely to the girl. " If you came across something horribly ugly, what would you do?" she said. Ines looked quite startled for a moment. "Where—what sort of thing?" she said. " Anything—anywhere," said Cade. Ines looked thoughtful. "I'd turn round and go some other way to avoid it," she said. < " If there wasn't any other way?" persisted Cade. " I think I'd try to cover it up," said Ines, after a minute's pause—" grow flowers over it, or drape it over with something. What would you do?" " Neither," said Cade "I think there is a certain strength in ugliness. The world would be very tame if you made everything pretty—pretty like that- Thar*

are quite as many ugly things in Nature as pretty ones, I think It doesn't look as if we shal 1 be very good friends, does it ?" " 1 think we might be very good enemies, though," said "Cues, smiling. CHAPTER V—AT JONATHAN'S. Out cif the nighl. that covers me, Black as the Pit from.' pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable -oil/. —ai : enley. At Jonathan's none of these changes bad taken place. The mean hall, papered with a cheap glazed paper, still confronted the opening dloor. The front sitting room, that in Mrs Jonathan's time had been a shrine for a plush suite, a black and gold overmantel, and a bewildering number of the small article* which ladies make "out of nothing" for sale at church bazaars, was now practically destitute. There was a table, it was true, but it had not even the decent covering of a cloth over its 'scratched, gaunt anatomy. There were two chairs. There was a packing case, its top littered with paper : coverea pamphlets andl books on farming. Abso> lately ao other article. Across the pasago a room was furnished as a bedroom—< that is to say, there was a stretcher bed in it, while «*ome clothes hung behind the door, and two or three portmanteaus —ex-pensive-looking, heavy affairs *n tan leather —stood against the wall. The next two rooms were entirely empty. The bathroom* was furnished with, its stationary galvanised bath, a. towel, and a pat of soap. The kitchen had the bare requisites "or the plainest cooking, together rrith a. table and a chair. This was the home of Scott Sheldon, the eldest son o f his mother, who had been a widow, but not for long. Scott's own father had been a hard-working country doctor o* unblemished! reputation. His stepfather, acquired when he was a little lad of isix. was a baronet, impecunious, and with standards of honour that were puzzling R.t times even, to a little lad of six. When Scot* was ten, and the new little half-brother, Cecil, an exquisitely pretty four-year-old, the baronet died, and left his widow very little but debts. A brother of the dead country doctor stepped forwar? aft this point and! gave Lady Barnsley o hundred a year for the education of his nephew Scott Sheldon, family pride forbidding that the little fellow should be dependent on the baronet's invisible income. Lady Barnsley still had two hundred .a vear, the fruit of careful provision for her bv her first husband, but from her second husband's estate she realised little more than £SO a year. As she pointed out, therefore, to her eldest son, the avuncular hundred for education was out of all proportion for such ? purpose, and seemed an almost cruel contract to the prospects of little Cecil, for whom no uncle, though he had several possessed of title, money, and honours, 'stepped forward and offered to assist to the extent of a suit of clothes. Scott, a squarely-built, plain lad, with the big heart and fine nature of his father, agreed instantly. "We'll go halves, of course, ' he said. "Keep half for Ceo and half for nie." "Perhaps your uncle Evan wouldn't like! that," said Lady Barnsley doubtfulljy. She was a delicate-looking, fluffy-haired woman, with n pealing, blue eyes, and the weak mouth that so often accompanies such. . "Oh, he won't mind," said Scott. 1 s'pose he didn't think a hundred would go as far as you say you can make it." "It would not run to a good boarding school for both of you," said his mother, "though it would be just sufficient for you alone. But it would be enough for us to live here in this country town and for yotr both to go to the Grammar School." Scott's face fell, i He had so passionately wanted to go away to a. big school and be a boy amongst boys. ■ Since the advent of his stepfather they had lived a nomadic sort of life, now in Continental hotels, now in narrow, fashionable quarters in London. For five years he had been like a plain, honest, little English plant that asks nothing better than to be left to spread out its roots in some clean, free field, but he had been pulled up and transplanted in so many sorts of strange soils that has roots be<*an to have a numb sort of feeling. And even now it might not be healthy, ordinary, school-boy life. He looked round the drawing room of the still fashionable little house that his mother had taken in a country town, ft seemed to consist to his crude eyes chiefly of lamp shades and cushions, and since these were so strictly guarded from boyish contact, he felt they must be among the very expensive things of life. ■ « \y e — we —.couldn't we do without quite so many of this sort of thing, mother?" he said, half timidly. " Education's a bi o, thing, you know." His uncle at the funeral had impressed it upon him now important education was. The world outside —oh! he had had glimpses of that struggling teeming world j Paris glimpses, London glimpses, glimpses in nearly all •the big cities of the Continent—would claim him in another five or six years, and a thrill of fear passed through his boyish soul at the thought of getting into that fighting world without a weapon. His uncle had impi-ecsed it on him that education was the only weapon when there was no wealth. Yes, he must make an effort to assure himself that the weapon would be good. "Do without so many of what?" said his mother.

Scott instanced timidly the lamp-shades " ■ —those mammoth, rose-pink affairs of chiffon and fine lace that might not be approached without a warning word —and gave so abominable a light one could not even learn one's home lessons by them, that were a constant source of danger from; a match. Surely here, said his practical young mind, was the place to economise. But his mother had wept —had called him barbarous in wishing to take from her her poor little comforts; had said he was a«? a'uthless as his iather, who had once actually asked her to leave overcrowded England and. let him start his profession again in some new country, like Australia. " A country where I might have had to do my own work; a country where there are black fellows, and bushrangers, and bush fires, and other frightful things! How can you be so cruel, Scott? Look at me. Do I look fit for the rough things of life?" Scott looked at her, and realised his barbarity. This frail little figure with the wet, blue eyes and the trailing dress of pathetic black —of course, she must have her comforts. He would defend her lamp-shades for her with his life. "That's all right, darling mother," he said, his own eyes full of tea_rs. " You shall always have pretty things. I'll go to the Grammar School here and come 'home at nights. Then there'll be plenty left for Cec, won't there?" Still, Lady Barnsley was not quite satisfied. She had an uncomfortable feeling that the uncle might not quite approve of the transaction, though he had certainly told her that he left the details of the education to her, since .he hated details. " I feel as if, perhaps, your uncle ought to know," she said weakly. " Tell him," quoth Scott, seeing no reason for concealment. " Say I'm willing to go to the Grammar School. It's a rattling good school they say. And that then there'll be enough for both of us." But Lady Barnsley conveyed the resolution in her own way. She 'stated the fact that she was most averse to sending her dear eldest son away from her own care to a public school; that he had expressed a great wish to go to the Grammar School here in town, where she was making her home, and that she was unwilling to thwart him ; that, of course, keeping him at home would make a difference to her expenses, but that she thought by dint of careful management she could make the hundred just suffice for the purpose. The uncle, who had always hated detail, was not too well pleased with the notion, but he disliked interference, and imagined that a mother was the best person to leave to manage her son's affairs. So he merely continued to send his cheques quarterly, marked, "For the education of my nephew, Scott Sheldon." Two or three times in the next- five years he journeyed all the way to the little Mitcham Grammar School to personally receive the head master's report and see his nephew. The report was invariably favourable. The head master said he had no more dependable, finernatured lad in the school than Scott. Not clever, nor brilliant in the least, but hard-working, determined, full of spirit and courage. If he wanted brilliancy there was Cecil, now. Scott brought Cecil up to be introduced to the gruff Uncle who never would cross his mother's threshold. Cecil had the face of a chorister on a Christmas-card—-his mother's eyes, his mother's skin, helped him to it. Scott had taken his swarthv complexion and keen dark eyes from his father. Cecil already at 10 wrote verse that was without a doubt unique, kept ahead of his schoolfellows in all class subjects, played both violin and piano in the manner of a young virtuoso, painted a water-colour with'no little skill, and, withal, not uncommonly carried off sports prizes for fleet running, high jumping, and so on. His- mother's pride in him was both pathetic and contagious. Scott, living beside her (/ came under the influence of it, and soon his own pride in Cecil almost equalled hers. The gifted lad was lovable, too. He poured out a wealth of hero-worship at feet, and never dreamed of undertaking anything of which Scott disapproved. " A pardlike spirit, beautiful and swift," was the quotation that the wife of the head master—a poetic, sentimental lady • —had applied to Cecil, and the quotation, spreading into the school, had giver, the boy the nickname of " The Bard." There was one' thing unusual about him—his extreme susceptibility to pain and discomfort; another thing he had inherited from his mother, unlike Scott, who had his father's stoic virtues of fortitude and endurance. As a baby a smack on the arm had been enough to throw sensitive Cecil almost into, convulsions. As a six-year-old a fall, a cut knee, a bad bruise brought so deathly a look to his face that onlookers used to be quite alarmed. To Scott—vigorous and well hardened—it used to eeem so pitiful a thing that on all possible occasions when pain might be borne by proxv he took it on himself and made Cecil stand by. There was the farmer's thrashing for the stolen apples. How many men are there in the world who have not just, one stolen apple blotting their boyhood's fair paee? Cecil had been practically under the whip when Scott had rushed the farmer, game as a young bulldog, and had hung doggedly on to his whip arm. " Cut, you little ass," Scott shouted as Cecil, white zs a sheet, hung tremblingly near. Upon which permission Cecil promptly dashed through the orchard gate, and made off down the road as if all the fiends of Hades were in pursuit. Of course, Scott was no match for the farmer, though he had been able, to delay matters. The man, a surly, illconditioned fellow, always at enmity with the schoolboys, got the boy down and inflicted such a thrashing for his interference that Scott carried the wales on his bodv for weeks after.

Still, he reflected grimly, unpleasant as

it was, it was better than if it had. been 1 Cecil. Cecil would never have come through it alive. Similarly at school lie saved l Cecil's skin a dozen times in the course of the years they were there together by cheerfully shouldering the.younger boy's transgressions. " This is Cec," he had said, proudly displaying him. to his uncle. The gruff fellow looked at the slight, beautiful boy with the brilliant eyes and the delicately cut mouth. " Hum!" he said, and turned away indifferently. He had no notion whatever that he himself had been paying Cecil's quarterly school bills and Cecil's violin and piano lessons for so long. He had no notion that Cecil was better dressed than Scott, who, in truth, as his mother often complained, never paid for dressing. Scott seemed happy enough, spoke affectionately of his mother, was evidently proud of the girlish-looking half-brother, and there the matter ended. At 19 Scott went to Oxford, partly on a scholarship that he had won by sheer hard and unremitting work; partly on what could be spared from Cecil's needs out of the hundred pounds. His ambitions were not as soaring as Cecil's. Cecil wished to be the greatest musician, artist, and poet the world had ever known.. Scott felt a career like his father's would entirely satisfy him. After three years at Oxford he began to walk the hospitals, and felt that his> weapon for fighting the great world was coming closer every day to his hand. And just at that point the gruff uncle died without making any will, and the son who returned from America to receive his inheritance saw no reason whatever for continuing that long paid hundred a year to & cousin he had never seen. Great consternation reigned in Lady Barnsley's breast, for Cecil's artistic habits grew more and more expensive. She went to fling herself on the charity of her second husband's brother, a prosperous London merchant. She implored his aid in giving a chance to a youth acknowledged by all who knew him "to be most rarely talented. The merchant detested talent; distrusted it with all his heart. He sent his sister-in-law away weeping because the only offer of help that he made his nephew was the promise of a stool in his counting-house. "He's got to take it, too," said Scott snortjy, when acquainted with the mission 'Look here, mother, you and I have-been doing our best to make a foo.l of Cecil. He e seventeen now, and no more fit for a man's work than a girl. AH these accomplishments of his are verv pretty, but just about as much use to him as a buttonhole of flowers would be in a shipwreck." r "But he may be one of the greatest poets of the century," wailed Ladv Barnsley. She said nothing now of 'art-, foir she had secretly coaxed a great painter down to the boy's studio, and he had told her frankly that though pretty and full of a delicate imagination, the pictures she .had thought so great were in no respect a whit better than those of five out of every six of the students at any serious art class in London. ; 'Similarly, Q great musician, wheedled into a frank opinion, would say nothing beyond the fact that the boy had a good ear and an accurate memory; he could not discern any sign of great promise. But the only poet approached had declared! that it was impossible to tell at such an early age, and had quoted Tennyson s "Juvenilia" as an example. " Ten years hence England may <rin<r with has name as a poet," the mother protested tearfully. "Well," said Scott patiently, . "taking a stool in an office isn't going "to stop it° If he's going to b 3 a poet, it will out sooner or later. But if he isn't, what are you jjoing to give him to fight the world with?" His own boyish . fear of that world where men must fight and struggle as soon as they were grown had returned to him. His proposed medical career was at an end for him—for the present. Be had counted hopefully on his uncle's help fo r two or three years more, and had looked forward' then to the day when he could go down to the kindly old fellow and tell him he needed it no longer. But this sudden cutting-off left hrm just launched at sea and without an oar. He must put back modfestly and shape that oar now for himself. But experience and growing wisdom showed him. the wrongfulness of the course his mother was talcing with Cecil. Where stretched the fair, ever-smiling sea that she vaguely expected should see his voyaging? The lad must cease from playing in the shallows and at once learn something: of seamanship. Indeed, he was so insistent that Lady Barnsley finally gave in to him, and consented" to Cecil going -up to London and entering the sordid office. She nourished the secret hope that the old merchant would be so struck by his talent and wfinningl ways that he would speedily make him a partner, which would in some slight degree compensate for the loss of his ehancea> as a poet. But Scott must actually see him into his uncle's care in London, and Scott must find some work that would enable them both to board together in the unpretentious boarding-house that was to serve until Lady Barnsley could dispose of her house in Little Mitcham and come to London. 'Scott accompanied the "pard-like spirit" to the den of commerce, and handed it over to the uncle; quite as grim and giuff a one as his own had been. Uncles to him to shed all their illusions about life very reacKly. The old merchant gave ten minutes of his time to conversation with Cecil, and then summoned his confidential clerk, and delivered him; over into 'that person's care. " Take him and lick him into shape. Smith," he said; " I'm his uncle. God help me, but I wouldn't attempt the job myself." 'Cecil walked after the clerk, the pink

of mortification upon his face, which still J possessed much of its choir-boy quality. I Scott, smarting for the boy, spoke up a little warmly; instanced the miothfir’s possibly unwise education, but stated that it was not too late, and that there? was any amount of good in the boy. The old merchant heard him out with patience. Something in. Scott’s blunt manner and plain face took his liking, while Cecil’s good looks and manners had done nothing but irritate him. He questioned him as to what he was doing himself. “ Looking for a job, too,” said Scott with a rather grim smile. “And what can you do? Piano and violin, too?” Scott had to confess to a moderate knowledge of Latin, Greek, and the higher mathematics, also to about six months’ acquaintance with the complicated piece of machinery known as the human frame divine. It was to further that knowledge that he was “looking for a job.” The old man regarded him thoughtfully from under shaggy eyebrows. “ Can’t offer you as soft a job as I’ve given that lily-handed nephew of mine. A pound a week he’s to cost me for making a nuisance of himself. Oh ! don’t tell me, I know the type.” _ “ Give him his chance,” said Scott goodhumouredly. “ Well, aren’t I doing it? A pound a week, just because your mother had blue eyes and cried ! But she didn’t cry over you—didn’t mention you, I believe. How was that?” “ She knew I was able to shift for myself,” Scott said. “ Hum ! Proud at all?” “ Not unduly I hope,” Scott smiled. “ There’s a billet vacant down in our office at the docks. Two pounds a week ; but it’s take off your coat and sweat at it. What do you say?” “I say thank you,” said Scott, and stood up energetically. “ I calculated that I was going to waste three months looking for something, and (then that it wouldn’t be much more than fifty a year. Thank you, sir.” The old merchant kept his eye on Scott. He let him “ sweat at it” for a year to test him, then, pleased with the result, gave hini work in which he might use his brain, and which brought with it a salary of two hundred. Scott saved a hundred and twenty in the first year of it towards the medical course that was waiting, like y a serial story, to be continued. The year after be saved a hundred. And both years he could have put away more, only that he- was continually helping Cecil, who was still drearily drawing his one pound a week, and finding his tastes refused to be satisfied upon such a meagre sum. Then came the great tragedy. The old merchant’s name was forged to a cheque for two hundred pounds, and suspicision for three days pointed directly to Cecil. He at least had cashed the cheque. The old man, blind with rage at his misused trust, set the law in motion. The following day Scott walked into his private room without knocking, and stood before him with ashen cheeks and wild eyes. “ I did it,” he said. “ Cecil only cashed it for me.” The old man’s rage increased, for here his trust had been greater. With Cecil he had' known in his inmost heart that be should not actually prosecute for the sake of the name which was his own. But be had no motive for upholding the stainlessness of the name of Sheldon, and with a frightful oath at hie own _ misjudged 1 trust he rang up for a police officer before Scott bad fairly finished his speech. The trial was purely a formal matter, for no defence was offered, and within a month the boy—he was still little more than that—was beginning to work out his sentence of three years with hard labour. At the end of it, of course, life _ in England was impossible. The medical career seemed broken forever. “You must find me fifty pounds immediately,” he said sternly to Lady Barnsley the day that he was released—“ you and Cecil between you. I shall leave for Australia at the end of this week. You can •sell something.” He almost said contemptuously, “ Sell your lampshades.” During the long years in prison he had . had time to think over many things. His nfother gave him the roll of notes tremblingly. The next day he walked out of her presence to his exile without one further word. She tried to console herself by packing for him. She ordered him two or three new suits, ties, shirts, collars, forgetting that he was going to a- land of “ black-fellows and bushrangers and other horrible things.” She bought some handsome portmanteaus and a cabin trunk, and had his , initials “ S. S.” printed on them in gold. He used to look at them grimlv as they confronted him for weeks in his third-class cabin. Cecil went down to see him off. The choir-bov expression had faded from his face and the brilliancy from his eyes. He looked merely what he was, a self-centred young man, prone to fits of extreme nerj vousness and despondency. One of the fits was plainly on him now as he timidly came up to where Scott stood on the deck, watching the final preparations for _ departure. “ I—won’t you say good-bye?” he said, and tears sprang into his eyes as he said it. A senseless fury possessed Scott. Ho could hardly restrain himself from taking his half-brother by the neck and dropping him over the side of the vessel into the mixture of bilge water and muddy Thames that lapped there. But he just managed to restrain himself. “Pah!” he said, and turned on his heel and shut himself in his cabin till the vessel was well out to sea. (To be continued.)