the pupil's roving eye that she should have to be his memory.
Jock saw that the note had brought an additional line of care to his mother's brow, and therefore still more gaily and eagerly adjured her not to fail in the Long Hanger, and as the shooting party started, he turned back to wave his cap, and shout, 'Sharp two!'
Two o'clock found three hungry youths and numerous dead birds on the pleasant thymy bank beneath the edge of the beach wood, but gaze as they might through the clear September air, neither mother, brother, nor sister was visible. Presently, however, the pony-carriage appeared, and in it a hamper, but driven only by the stable-boy. He said a gentleman was at the house, and Mrs. Brownlow was very sorry that she could not come, but had sent him with the luncheon.
'I shall go and see after her,' said Jock; and in spite of all remonstrance, and assurance that it was only a form of Parsonic tyranny, he took a draught of ale and a handful of sandwiches, sprang into the carriage, and drove off, hardly knowing why, but with a yearning towards his mother, and a sense that all that was unexpected boded evil. Leaving the pony at the stables, and walking up to the house, he heard sounds that caused him to look in at the open library window.
On one side of the table stood his mother, on the other Dr. Demetrius Hermann, with insinuating face, but arm upraised as if in threatening.
'Scoundrel!' burst forth Jock. Both turned, and his mother's look of relief and joy met him as he sprang to her side, exclaiming, 'What does this mean? How dare you?'
'No, no!' she cried breathlessly, clinging to his arm. 'He did not mean-it was only a gesture!'
'I'll have no such gestures to my mother.'
'Sir, the honoured lady only does me justice. I meant nothing violent. Zat is for you English military, whose veapon is zie horse- vhip.'
'As you will soon feel,' said Jock, 'if you attempt to bully my mother. What does it mean, mother dear?'
'He made a mistake,' she said, in a quick, tremulous tone, showing how much she was shaken. 'He thinks me a quack doctor's widow, whose secret is matter of bargain and sale.'
'Madame! I offered most honourable terms.'
'Terms, indeed! I told you the affair is no empirical secret to be bought.'
'Yet madame knows that I am in possession of a portion of zie discovery, and that it is in my power to pursue it further, though, for family considerations, I offer her to take me into confidence, so that all may profit in unison,' said the Greek, in his blandest manner.
'The very word profit shows your utter want of appreciation,' said Mrs. Brownlow, with dignity. 'Such discoveries are the property of the entire faculty, to be used for the general benefit, not for private selfish profit. I do not know how much information may have been obtained, but if any attempt be made to use it in the charlatan fashion you propose, I shall at once expose the whole transaction, and send my husband's papers to the Lancet.'
Hermann shrugged his shoulders and looked at Lucas, as if considering whether more or less reason could be expected from a soldier than from a woman. It was to him that he spoke.
'Madame cannot see zie matter in zie light of business. I have offered freely to share all that I shall gain, if I may only obtain the data needful to perfect zie discovery of zie learned and venerated father. I am met wit anger I cannot comprehend.'
'Nor ever will,' said Caroline.
'And,' pursued Dr. Hermann, 'when, on zie oder hand, I explain that my wife has imparted to me sufficient to enable me to perfectionate the discovery, and if the reserve be continued, it is just to demand compensation, I am met with indignation even greater. I appeal to zie captain. Is this treatment such as my proposals merit?'
'Not quite,' said Jock. 'That is to be kicked out of the house, as you shortly will be, if you do not take yourself off.'
'Sir, your amiable affection for madame leads you to forget, as she does, zie claim of your sister.'
'No one has any claim on my mother,' said Jock.
'Zie moral claim-zie claim of affection,' began the Greek; but Caroline interrupted him-
'Dr. Hermann is not the person fitly to remind me of these. They have not been much thought of in Janet's case. I mean to act as justly as I can by my daughter, but I have absolutely nothing to give her at present. Till I know what my own means may prove to be I can do nothing.'
'But madame holds out zie hope of some endowment. I shall be in a condition to be independent of it, but it would be sweet to my wife as a token of pardon. I could bear away a promise.'
'I promise nothing,' was the reply. 'If I have anything to give- even then, all would depend on your conduct and the line you may take. And above all, remember, it is in my power to frustrate and expose any attempt to misuse any hints that may have been stolen from my husband's memoranda. In my power, and my duty.'
'Madame might have spared me this,' sighed the Athenian. 'My poor Janette! She will not believe how her husband has been received.'
He was gone. Caroline dropped into a chair, but the next moment she almost screamed-
'Oh, we must not let him go thus! He may revenge it on her! Go after him, get his address, tell him she shall have her share if he will behave well to her.'
Jock fulfilled his mission according to his own judgment, and as he returned his mother started up.
'You have not brought him back!'
'I should rather think not!'
'Janet's husband! Oh, Jock, it is very dreadful! My poor child!'
She had been a little lioness in face of the enemy, but she was trembling so hopelessly that Jock put her on a couch and knelt with his arm round her while she laid her head on his strong young shoulder.
'Let me fetch you some wine, mother darling,' he said.
'No, no-to feel you is better than anything,' putting his arm closer-
'What was it all about, mother?'
'Ah! you don't know, yet you went straight to the point, my dear champion.'
'He was bullying you, that was enough. I thought for a moment the brute was going to strike you.'
'That was only gesticulation. I'm glad you didn't knock him down when you made in to the rescue.'
She could laugh a little now.
'I should like to have done it. What did he want? Money, of course?'
'Not solely. I can't tell you all about it; but Janet saw some memoranda of your father's, and he wants to get hold of them.'
'To pervert them to some quackery?'
'If not, I do him great injustice.'
'Give them up to a rogue like that! I should guess not! It will be some little time before he tries again. Well done, little mother!'
'If he will not turn upon her.'
'What a speculation he must have thought her.'
'Don't talk of it, Jock; I can't bear to think of her in such hands.'
'Janet has a spirit of her own. I should think she could get her way with her subtle Athenian. Where did he drop from?'
'He overtook me on my way back from the Church, for indeed I did not mean to break my appointment. I don't think the servants knew who was here. And Jock, if you mention it to the others, don't speak of this matter of the papers. Call it, as you may with truth, an attempt to extort money.'
'Very well,' he gravely said.
'It is true,' she continued, 'that I have valuable memoranda of your father's in my charge; but you must trust me when I say that I am not at liberty to tell you more.'
'Of course I do. So the mother was really coming, like a good little Red-riding-hood, to bring her son's dinner into the forest, when she met with the wolf! Pray, has he eaten up the two kids at a mouthful?'
'No, Miss Parsons had done that already. They are making the Church so beautiful, and it did not seem possible to spare them, though I hope Armine may get home in time to get his work done for Bobus.'
'Is not he worked rather hard between the two? He does not seem to thrive on it.'
'Jock, I can say it to you. I don't know what to do. The poor boy's heart is in these Church matters, and he is
