future lot of the enemies of the true Church -the Papists and their congeners-and expressed his conviction that their punishment would be even more severe. Dick understood quite well to whom these latter observations pointed, and for whose benefit they were made. But he had some curiosity to know the name of the unfortunate gentleman to whom personal allusion had been made; and he expressed it.

'I was speaking of your grandfather, Lord Earnshaw,' said Mr. Talbot, coldly.

By jingo!' cried Dick, for it struck him this was going rather far—' I mean was he very bad, sir?'

Yet

'As a man he could not be worse. he did less harm than many apparently good people whose principles are antagonistic to true religion. Good-night, my boy, and Heaven defend you from all evil, spiritual and temporal.'

For the first time for years he kissed the boy, as he thus invoked on him the Divine protection.

Again Dick felt deeply moved.

It was

plain the governor was really fond of him, thought he, as he took up his bed-candle and moved off towards his chamber. How much better it would have been if he had made a clean breast of it about the 'tenner' and the ticker'-the ten pounds and the watch. But he felt somehow that he couldn't do that while this Frenchman was in the house. Why had he not been made to come in to prayers like other people? He was probably, it was true, a Papist, and would have found some of the governor's remarks a little 'hot,' and yet it was his father's boast that he spared no one, but delivered the Truth to all men, whether in season or out of season. This fellow was enjoying a cigar all this time; why should not he (Dick) enjoy one too? He had at least as good a right as the other to the use of the smoking-room. His father, indeed, had taken it for granted that he was going to bed; but then neither his father nor the rector were aware that he was addicted to tobacco. This De Blaise had called him a schoolboy, seeing,

132 LESS BLACK THAN WE'RE PAINTED.

perhaps, that he was treated as such. It was high time that he should assert himself. He would join the rector and this stranger in the smoking-room, if they were still there, and have a cigar before he went to bed.

CHAPTER VIII.

IN THE SMOKING-ROOM.

THAT 'youth and age cannot live together' is a statement which has been disproved by experience; but that they cannot do so harmoniously without some exceptional characteristics on one side-namely, on that of age-is very true.

The old man must be, if not young in mind, sufficiently mindful of his own youth to make allowances for the weaknesses of that period of life; not too dogmatic; and of a gentle and kindly disposition. This is far more to the purpose than mere cheerfulness. It has been well observed that the vivacity which sometimes distinguishes old age is very like folly, and there are

none who recognise this more readily than

the young. The great difficulty in the matter is social intercourse. The mature mind finds it not only wearisome, but often impossible, to chime in with the views of youth-which it has entertained itself, at one time, and found them to be chimerical.

The Rev. Giles Freeman, Rector of Durnton Regis, an eloquent and popular theologian, had not many ideas in common with Mr. Charles de Blaise, a sub-lieutenant of French infantry, and national in his notions to the backbone. Also, more than a quarter of a century of years yawned between them. It may have seemed, therefore, no trifling obligation under which the Rector laid his friend, when he took the young soldier off his shoulders that evening at the Tower, and on to his own. There were two advantages, however, to be placed in the other side of the scale. First, Tobacco: magic mitigator of conversational woe; balm of all boredom; blest chloroform that fits the mind to bear all shocks, or, rather, which plucks from them