Without waiting for a reply, the old gentleman seized his stick, and sallied forth from the room; his mind was made up, and he had now plainly told it.

Mr. Beaumont sat in pale dismay. Every hope was baffled; the schemes of years, the plans, and dreams, and misgivings of a hundred journeys to S. Mary's Hill, and of long conversations with his wife. What was to be done? How dare he tell it to his lady? She, Dashwood as she was, had a Dashwood temper. How dare he break it to Raymond? He rose, he sauntered to the window, he stared at a Canaletti on the wall. He trod in his promenade through the room on the squares of the carpet, avoiding all the circles. Eustace! the affected brat, to come in the way so materially with his Raymond. Eustace! the child of a woman upon whom his wife would not even call. It must not be; it cannot be. Eustace must be ruined. He must be got rid of somehow, by fair means or foul. Mr. Beaumont knew Mr. Cleffain's unchanging purpose; he knew nothing could alter him.

He rang the bell, and ordered his horse. He mounted it silently and gloomily, and rode out into the solitary lane. He had never before ridden from S. Mary's Hill less joyfully.

Halfway up the lane he suddenly put spurs to his horse, and looked briskly up.

"Yes, yes, that will do, that will do. It must be, come what will, and Eustace shall be disinherited."

But let us follow Mr. Cleffain into his own room.-Its quaintness and arrangements are worth describing. It was octagonal in shape, and went in the house by the name of "the Octagon." There was no window, but a skylight, which would not open, on which the burning blue of a midday summer sky gleamed like a burnished shield,

or the thick rains of November pattered down, shedding a sombre darkness over the room.

In the old-fashioned fire-place, a perpetual fire smouldered summer and winter; while, over the chimney-piece was a looking-glass, which had once belonged to the Duke of York. The mantelpiece itself was crowded with halffinished sketches, pieces of white chalk, broken bits of gilt frames, sticks of Indian ink, camel's-hair brushes, brass holders of crayons, and letters which almost before read, had received on their blank side a sketch from Gainsborough.

The walls of the octagon were covered with book-shelves painted white; on some, stood old books, from which it would be difficult to judge of Mr. Cleffain's style of reading. "Plutarch's Lives," "Blair's Sermons," "Clark's Travels," "Cæsar's Commentaries," "The Life of Dr. Parr," "The Life of Garrick," "The Universal History," and "The Gentleman's Magazine," will give a faint outline of the variety that lay scattered about. But I must not forget two old Prayer-Books, with their thick, inexplicable shape, neither octavo nor duodecimo, one black and the other red; each had toned down to the other as years rolled on, as good old people do, who learn as the streams of their onward course flow on, that it is better as well as possible, to assimilate in the tastes and tempers of life. Good old books, with your dingy, gilt-edged leaves! The black binding had worn to purple, and the red approached it in a sort of shadowy dimness, which brought you pretty well to a unity of colour. Then as to describing the multitudinous sketches in Indian ink, stuck upon the book-shelves with pins, or lying scattered in all parts on the table, or the projecting cupboards beneath the book-cases, the semi-circular armchair, in which the old man sat, the table with its drawing-boards,

the white broken gallipots, the two curtains, one of dovecoloured moreen, and the other of green baize, which hung over the doorway to exclude the least possible breath of air; the old man himself, how he looked as he sat in the chair that evening, when, having left the disconsolate Mr. Beaumont, he dabbed a wet sponge over the back of a note, and with a stick of Indian ink proceeded to sketch-all this I leave to my readers' imagination, or in some cases to their memory.

CHAPTER II.

EVELYN NOEL.

Ir is time to return to the two boys. Little knowing of how momentous a conversation they had been the heroes, they were pursuing together their evening game.

Tired of riding, Raymond had soon returned from the hayfield and found Eustace ruminating alone in the orchard.

"Oh, what a fellow you are: why did you not come, Eustace? It would have been so capital if you had taken Sholto and ridden with me, old Cleffain would have known nothing of it; for he is blind as a bat, and there is not a lad or man in the stable-yard, who would have said a word to him, if I had wished them not. What an odd fellow you are, Eustace. There you sit moping all day at home: never saw a school; see nothing but your mother and the maid; and do nothing but read Herodotus;-why you'll never be a man, never.”

By this time they had wandered off together into the

hay-field. They walked on among the hay-cocks, which stood like huge lazy sentinels at evening guarding the field, while the gnats in sportive frolic hovered round them in the glow of light that played above the hedge against the western sky.

Raymond had a respect for Eustace, and Eustace had a regard for Raymond, to which neither of them gave full expression. They stood too far apart from each other in position and circumstances, for much actual rivalry to grow up between them.

They had wandered on in this way some half-hour, and had come down to the gate, which opened opposite a pond in the lane, and were leaning on the bars carrying on their conversation, when a cry broke on their ears from the high road, which was at the end of the lane, seeming to come from some one in distress or terror.

"What's that ?" exclaimed Raymond, listening to the distant cry, which sounded the more clearly from the stillness of the evening air.

Again and again the cry was repeated, and with it the noise of wheels rolling rapidly along the high road.

Eustace was no coward, but there were things which made him shrink from meeting danger. He lacked that firmness of nerve which would have made him of use in a crisis. He shrank from human suffering, and had a horror of facing an accident.

"I don't know," said he, "I think we'll go back." "Go back," said Raymond, "why, there's something the matter."

"The matter; yes! But we can't be of any use; it's a long way off.”

"Nonsense; but you don't mean to say you will run

away."

"Run away! I'm not running away," said Eustace,

still standing in a hesitating attitude by the gate. "I'm not going to run away from anything."

"Halloo! the accident's coming this way any how," said Raymond, as the sound of a horse's feet, and the increased cries of some person in danger, showed that the carriage had turned from the high road down into the lane. At a slight bend of the hedge, some little way up, they were able to see a britska, the horse of which had been frightened, and was now running away, while a child, the sole occupant of the carriage, was clinging in terror to the door.

The first impulse of Eustace was to hesitate. His natural timidity held him back; but a second thought soon altered his purpose. "Rush, rush to that side, Raymond. I will make a catch at the horse: we may be able to stop him.”

The animal was dashing on at headlong fury. Raymond paused, staring at the impending danger. To attempt to seize the horse was fraught with peril, and Raymond hesitated.

Eustace had no sooner spoken than he was at his post. With a steady eye he had seen the rein which he should seize, and without heeding at that instant the child, whose imminent peril might have shaken his nerves, he ran at the animal. But, as he tried to seize it, his foot slipped, and he fell to the ground; and the creature, more alarmed by the momentary check, darted wildly on. Raymond still paused. Eustace's accident took from him the selfpossession he had seemed to have, and it appeared likely that Eustace would have been left lying on the ground, and the child in the carriage to her fate, had not another youth at the instant appeared from the hedge on the other side of the road.

He was well built, rather stout than otherwise, and