good-humoured but very scientific manner to take Ro down a peg.' However, Roland was an affectionate boy, with the makings of a man in him, and if he was inclined to be priggish he had some excuse. He had been the most prominent oppidan at Eton; and his tutor, a very distinguished classical scholar, who thought the highest thing in life was to be a schoolmaster or a college don, had said to him at parting, 'Well, Langley, I am glad your people recognise that you are too good to be wasted on the army.'

Now

Most families fall into natural subdivisions, and the Langleys were no exception to the rule. Harry and Barbara had always been firm allies. Evelyn and Roland, though given to sparring with each other, never failed to present an unbroken front to an external enemy. Guy, who came between the two pairs, was a general favourite, but he was from the beginning his mother's boy and had taken all his childish confidences direct to her. it was his last day at Wrentham, and Lady Mary's eyes rested on him wistfully as he stood on the steps in the sunlight, his left arm carelessly linked in Evelyn's, and his face turned towards the stable, in front of which two or three dogs were barking madly and straining at their collars, hindering by their impatience the boy who was trying to loose them. A few seconds later they were racing across the courtyard, old Saxon, the deerhound, a dozen lengths ahead; and after a stormy greeting the party set out for their walk.

'Come with me, Guy,' his mother said, and she thought with a sudden pang that this was perhaps the last time, the last of so many since he had been a sunny-faced baby of four. How well she remembered his first Sunday afternoon walk, his pride at his promotion, and his scornful refusals to admit that he was tired. 'Twenty years ago,' she thought, and sighed. Then she repressed the feelings that were crowding upon her, and went on with an air of half-assumed disgust: "You wretched boys! Poisoning the pure air of heaven with your horrid tobacco.' Guy laughed. It was an old subject of discussion between them, and had been a sore subject once; but Lady Mary, like a sensible woman, had yielded upon this point, and many others, when she found her sons growing out of leading-strings. 'You know you like it really, mother,' he said. 'I had hard work to educate you, and you must not be ungrateful.' She answered him with a smile, and they passed out together under the great stone gateway.

It was a walk both mother and son often thought of in after years. Away in India Guy would sit at times with a far-off look in his eyes, dreaming of the old home, and that afternoon seemed to come before him with special clearness. He could see the sunlight on the grass slopes, and the autumn tints on the trees, and he seemed to feel again the still cool air just touched with the scent of the coming winter. And his mother remembered it too, poor lady, gazing out upon the path they had trodden side by side, and longing, with a longing that was physical pain, for one look of those straight gray eyes and the ring of the cheery voice. The walk was rather a sad one. Charles Langley and his eldest son went on ahead, talking of the pheasants and the prospects of the hunting. Lady Mary spoke little. The young people laughed and chatted about the familiar objects they passed, but their laughter seemed a little out of tune, and once or twice the talk slackened into silence in a way that was unusual with that somewhat noisy family. When their heads were turned homewards the breaks of silence became longer, and by the time they arrived at the Hall they all felt tired and depressed.

There remained a couple of hours before dinner, and Guy strolled off to spend a part of them in saying good-bye to his friends at the stables. He was a favourite with man and beast, and his welcome was a pleasant one. It was dark when he finished his chat with old James the coachman in the saddle-room, and knocked, as he had promised to do, at the door of his father's study. Charles Langley was sitting in a leather-covered armchair, with his feet on the fender, reading The Field. Early as it was a fire was agreeable. 'Well, Guy,' he said, as his son walked into the room and drew a chair up opposite to him, 'so you are off to-morrow.'

'Yes, father.'

'I wish you could have stayed in England a little longer; but you are quite right to stick to your regiment, though your mother does not agree with me there. I don't like to see a soldier shirking foreign service.'

'I wouldn't leave the regiment for anything in the world,' Guy answered warmly; and his father looked at him with approving eyes.

You are all right about money?'

'Yes. I owe a little, but not more than I can manage.'

'That's right. It's a stupid thing to get into debt. All the same, you must have extra expenses just now, and you may want

something in India at first,' and he took a closed envelope from the table at his side and handed it over to his son.

'Thank you, father,' Guy said, 'I daresay I shall know what to do with it; but I told you I would manage on my allowance if you let me go into the cavalry. It has been rather a tight fit sometimes, but I have never troubled you, have I?'

'No, never. But I felt sure you would keep straight,' his father answered; and I am sure you always will, about everything else as well as money.'

Guy did not reply, and there was a pause which neither seemed able to break. Both would have liked to say something more, but both were embarrassed. Then Charles Langley put

an end to the silence and the interview.

Hallo,' he said, with a glance at the clock on his mantelpiece; it is time to dress for dinner. I did not know it was so late. I never heard the gong.'

Guy pushed back his chair slowly, stood for a moment in front of the fire, and then walked out of the room. As he passed behind the armchair, he laid his hand gently upon his father's shoulder. Charles Langley looked round with a smile and a nod, and then, as the door closed and the sound of Guy's footsteps died away down the passage, he sighed and stood up. He felt that they should have been more to one another; that in his indolence he had let the boy drift away from him. Now it was too late.

After dinner, as the Langleys sat round the great fireplace in the hall, the talk and the laughter were bright enough. It was a way they had in all but the coldest weather. The hall was a fine lofty room, the walls covered with trophies brought back by sporting or fighting Langleys for generations past. Great heads of moose and bison from America, the tapering twisted horns of Indian and African antelopes, and swords, spears, shields, and strange old firearms were mixed together overhead; while the polished wooden floor was half covered by the skins of · tigers and leopards and bears. At either side of the projecting carved fireplace stood a figure in full armour, supposed to have been worn by some of the bygone Blunts. These motionless figures, with their closed helmets, were rather ghostly companions; but they had stood there ever since the days of Sir John, and the hall which they had so long guarded seemed to be the representative room of the house and the race. It was the room the Langleys dreamt of when they were away; and for

the adornment of it the boys incurred many a hard day's work, and faced many a danger.

There they gathered to spend their last evening together. Charles Langley and Harry sat near a lamplit table reading, while the rest grouped themselves about the log-fire, Guy's long limbs stretched out across the bearskin hearthrug, and his head resting upon a cushion which he had comfortably disposed against his mother's knees. Nobody but Guy would have dreamt of such a thing in that house, but Guy could do anything. For an hour or more the talk and the laughter went on, Lady Mary alone being silent, her hand moving softly at times about Guy's head. Then the bell in the courtyard suddenly rang out the summons to prayers. Guy got up, rather unwillingly, and they all passed into the inner room, where the servants were awaiting them. As they went Roland put into words the idea which had struck more than one of them. 'How dreary the old bell sounds to-night,' he said in a rather sentimental tone, 'as if it were tolling for Guy's departure.'

'What an idiot

Evelyn turned upon him with sudden wrath. you are, Ro,' she whispered savagely. 'Can't you see what it is to mother?' and he went to his seat feeling hurt but penitent. Charles Langley read a few verses, and then they knelt and listened again to the beautiful, evening collects, and rose, none the better perhaps some of them, but quieted and calmed by the solemn words. They generally gathered in the hall again when prayers were over, but that night Lady Mary could stand no more. 'You have to be up early,' she said, laying her hand on Guy's arm as the servants left the room; 'go and have your cigar, and come to my room for a minute when you are going to bed.'

So they broke up, the girls following their father and mother, and the young men going off to change their coats and assemble in their den in the east wing.

That night they did not stay long smoking. In less than an hour they parted; Guy walking down the passage with his arm over Roland's shoulder. 'Good-night, Ro,' he said, as they stood by the door of their mother's room. 'Be a good boy, and don't think me a beast for sitting on you. It's my way, you know.' And then, as he caught a glimpse of the boy's face, he turned hastily round and knocked at the door.

When Guy left his mother an hour later he had realised more clearly perhaps than ever before the strength of her love for him.

She spoke to him quietly, never breaking down for a moment, but he saw how hard it was to her; and when at the last he lifted and kissed, as he used to do, a mass of the beautiful brown hair which hung down below her waist, she threw her arms round him with such a passionate cry that he was startled. 'Now go,' she said, with a sudden change of manner, and her good-night' sounded hard and constrained.

Guy's room looked rather desolate with his little remaining luggage packed ready for the start, but he was young and had the world before him, and he was soon asleep. For an hour afterwards his mother sat before the fire thinking of all he had been to her. Now and then a smile came over her face, but for the most the steady brown eyes were very sad. At last she shivered and got up. The fire was almost out and the room felt cold. She walked across to her dressing-table, and stopped a moment before it. Then she lifted up the mass of hair that Guy had kissed, and cut away a heavy tress. 'He will like to have it when he is away,' she said to herself, 'my own boy.'