"Done with what, Mr. Robert?" said I.

"I'm dune wi't a'," said he. "And as for yon donnert auld carle"

"Mr. Robert! Mr. Robert!" I cried, "you must not speak so of your father. He"

"I'll speak how I choose," said he, "and I'll no' seek your permission, MacConnachie-nor his either. What I say I'll do, or my name's no more Rab Graham o' Carrick. If I say I'm to have a lass I'll ha'e her, and no' a man on this side o' Fife 'll stop me."

With that I began to see at last how the wind blew, for the Bishopshire gossip runs quick, and rumor had been rife enough; and I saw that this was no ordinary quarrel that had broken out between father and son, but one that was like to take some laying. For you may tell a young man that he is an ignoramus in most things, and he will only laugh at you; but tell him he has made a fool of himself in his choice of a woman and you have raised up a devil.

"Ah!" I said, "so, is it? They say in the village it is Ailie Nicoll."

"Mistress Alison Nicoll!" he roared. "I've heard her miscalled enough for one morning. Well, then, it is Ailie Nicoll, and it's Lady Carrick she's to be, and my father can flee ower the Bishop's Hill if that disna suit him."

"But, Mr. Robert," I reminded him, "your first duty is always to your father. He is an older man than you, and you must just be guided."

"Ay, ay," he said, more quietly, but with a terrible bitterness, "there you go with your texts and your precepts. Much good they've done you, and much they'll do me. 'Sdeath, man, can ye no' see how it is? My mind's made up. I'll have what I want or

nothing."

"But your father". -I began again. "Ay, ay," he broke in impatiently. "My father, my father-aye my father!

I tell ye I don't give that puddockstool for my father. Look ye here, MacConnachie, am I still a bairn at your school, or am I a man?"

"You have arrived at what are usually called years of discretion, Mr. Robert," I said.

"No doubt," said he; "no doubt. And I suppose that's why I'm girded round by a pack of havering old hens aye cacklin' about nothing."

"Mr. Robert," I said, "if you are going to speak like that I must say good-day. Neither my rank nor yours will permit of my remaining."

"Well, say good-day, then," said he, still sulking, "and be done with it. Away and see my father and hear his words of wisdom."

"I am just going," I said. "But for your own sake, Mr. Robert, and, if I may venture to say it, for mine, don't go making yourself the laughing-stock of the countryside for the sake of a minister's daughter."

I thought for an instant he was going to jump down my throat, but his face changed suddenly. It was these sudden changes that made the real charm-perhaps the only charm-of his

nature.

"MacConnachie," he said, "I've been rude to you, and you're a good soul, and I'm sorry for it. But I've had a hard morning, and there's some'll have a harder yet over the head of it all;" and with that he spun on his heel and walked from me without another word.

I confess that it was not with the lightest of hearts that I went on my way to the Castle, for to the difficulties of an interview with his lordship -never a thing to be approached lightly-was added this new trouble, with the probability that I should find the old gentleman in his least amiable temper. I think if I had known then of half the trouble that was in store I should have altogether despaired; but

by a merciful dispensation of Providence, as old Mr. Nicoll would tell you, these things are hidden.

Lord Carrick was sitting over some papers in the dismal chamber known as the library, a room whose hideousness and discomfort he seemed to appreciate, for he used it as seldom as possible. Even on this bright morning there was a dim and secret atmosphere about the gaunt place that whispered of conspiracy, and—a more useful purpose served to hide the extremely faded character of the upholsterings. His lordship made it a practice to receive his men of business in this room, ostensibly because it was his only chamber of state, but really, I think, because he liked to set them in front of a window and mark the play of their faces from some twilit recess opposite where he himself could be but dimly perceived.

As his aged man-servant opened the door he looked up from his papers with a sharp "Who's this?" but on seeing who his visitor was he greeted me warmly.

"Ah, MacConnachie," said he, "so it is you! You're welcome, man, for there's more than one thing I have to say to you."

To

With that he set me in the usual chair before the light-I well believe it was the only one with a whole cover in the room-and fell to telling me one of the two stories with which he invariably prefaced his business. my surprise, he was in an excellent humor, and not content with the one story, told the other as well. He had a pint of claret, and over this we discussed the business, whatever it was, that had brought me there. And then, when I might reasonably be supposed to be off my guard, he wheeled on me suddenly and said without any change of tone, "So you met Rab outside?"

I made no doubt he had watched our conversation from the window so I

admitted at once that I had: whereupon his lordship rose and took up his stand at the window with his back turned towards me and his thin hands clasped behind him.

"Rab," said he that was the name by which he invariably spoke of his son, which was the more surprising as for some reason he loathed the Scotch tongue beyond all tolerance “Rab is a fool. He doesn't know his own mind, and he will allow no one to know it for him."

I said something, I dare say, upon the natural impulses of youth; but he was not to be put off.

"What do you think of this woman Alison Nicoll, MacConnachie?" said he, and turned those light-blue eyes of his full upon me.

I replied guardedly that I knew of much in her favor and little or nothing otherwise.

"MacConnachie," said he pettishly, "there are times when you incline to trifle. However, I am in no need of information from you. I have made a point of knowing things for myself all my days, and I think I know enough. I have no idea what my son has said to you or you to him; but I regard this woman as unfit to be the wife of a Graham of Carrick, and she never shall."

I

"In respect of birth, my lord"was beginning, for indeed the Nicolls were well enough connected; but he stopped me with his hand.

"No doubt," he said in his dryest voice; "no doubt. But the woman's a fool, MacConnachie, as you must know very well. If the woman's a duchess she may be the greatest fool that ever walked, but otherwise she had much better not."

"She is headstrong, my lord," I said; "but it is my opinion that she would make a good wife."

"I do not question your opinion," he said with one blue eye half-shut and his

dry smile playing all round his mouth. "In fact, I could have told you it without asking. Rab wants a new toy, and he must have it. Eh, MacConnachie? Man, man, what a grandfather you would make!" And he fell to laughing shrilly at my discomfiture.

"However," he cried a minute later, "all that's neither here nor there. Не won't marry this woman-not now at any rate; and if not now, then never. I am sending him off to Paris to-morrow."

"Paris!" I cried, shaken out of all respectfulness. "What would he do there?" And I tried to read his face, but he was back among his shadows again.

"I will ignore the impertinence of your question, MacConnachie," he said. "Indeed, I will even answer it. Не will do two things. He will transact

Chambers's Journal.

some small private business of my own, and he will marry a wife. The former he will be glad to do; the latter he will not be able to avoid."

"But, my lord," I asked in some surprise, "will he go?"

"Go!" he cried, as if the thought amused him. "I shall make him go. And, besides, he would give both his ears and half that black mane he sets such store by for the chance. And now, MacConnachie, fill up your glass, and we will continue that question you were raising."

After that I dared ask no more, and to this day I know not the nature of the "private business" the Master was sent to do. But in the light of what followed I think I can guess; and if I were asked how the Master came to turn Jacobite, I think I could lay my hand with some accuracy upon the source of his inspiration.

Charles Hilton Brown.

Dickens and Thackeray. For this letter-written to my father, David Masson, in May 1851, is a letter written by Thackeray about Dickens: and thereby hangs a tale.

In the May of 1851, my father, then a young Scotsman in London, at the outset of a long literary career, had contributed to the "North British Review" an article on the two novels of the moment, "Pendennis" and "David Copperfield." At that time, Alexander Campbell Fraser was the able and energetic young editor of the "North British Review." He and my father had been college companions: they were to be afterwards colleagues in Edinburgh University, and lifelong friends. What more natural than that these two young men should be helping one another; and that when, in March 1851, Fraser begged his friend for an article on "Pendennis" and "Copperfield"-stipulating that it should not, if possible, exceed thirtytwo pages-he should add the words of brotherly encouragement, "I anticipate a chef d'œuvre"?

It was apparently a happy editorial thought to send a copy of the Review containing the article, "with the author's compliments," to Dickens and to Thackeray. "Your paper," wrote the young editor in the letter which car

ried this suggestion, "is much applauded." And thus it came about that in the May of 1851 my father received letters of acknowledgment from Dickens and from Thackeray: Dickens's letter to be remembered by him only as "very pleasant; but there was nothing particular about it"; the memory of Thackeray's to be cherished always, "because in it he spoke so enthusiastically of Dickens."

Small wonder that Dickens's pleasant little note should contain "nothing particular"; the wonder is that he should have found time to read the article at all, and to feel "truly gratified by the praise which is so eloquently and thoughtfully bestowed." The note is dated from his house in Devonshire Terrace, "Ninth May, 1851," and its mourning edge is a reminder that Dickens had lately been at Malvern, at the deathbed of his father. He had returned to London in time to preside, and make his great speech, at the Theatrical Fund Dinner, on April 14, and it was on that same night, after his speech, that he had been told (I think by his sister-in-law, Miss Hogarth, on the doorsteps of the house in Devonshire Terrace) of the death of his baby daughter, Dora Annie, eight months old. The baby had been dead scarce four weeks when Dickens wrote that pleasant little note to my father; and he must at the time have been very much occupied with the preparations for the performance of the farce by himself and Mark Lemon, "Mr. Nightingale's Diary," which, with Lytton's comedy, "Not so Bad as we Seem," was to be played on May 27 at the Duke of Devonshire's house in Piccadilly, before the Queen and the Prince Consort.

With Thackeray it was different. For him, there were no theatricals in view; though he too was a busy man,