oking all the vale of Thyme.

"I have to apologise, sir, for last night----" he would begin.

"Of course you have," the old gentleman would cut in cheerfully. "You
spoke like a fool. Say no more about it."

"You do not understand me, sir. I refer to a particular point. I confess
there is much force in your argument from the doctrine of
possibilities."

"Of course there is," returned his father. "Come down and look at the
stables. Only," he would add, "bear this in mind, and do remember that a
man of my age and experience knows more about what he is saying than a
raw boy."

He would utter the word "boy" even more offensively than the average of
fathers, and the light way in which he accepted these apologies cut Dick
to the heart. The latter drew slighting comparisons, and remembered that
he was the only one who ever apologised. This gave him a high station in
his own esteem, and thus contributed indirectly to his better behaviour;
for he was scrupulous as well as high-spirited, and prided himself on
nothing more than on a just submission.

So things went on until the famous occasion when Mr. Naseby, becoming
engrossed in securing the election of a sound party candidate to
Parliament, wrote a flaming letter to the papers. The letter had about
every demerit of party letters in general: it was expressed with the
energy of a believer; it was personal; it was a little more than half
unfair, and about a quarter untrue. The old man did not mean to say what
was untrue, you may be sure; but he had rashly picked up gossip, as his
prejudice suggested, and now rashly launched it on the public with the
sanction of his name.

"The Liberal candidate," he concluded, "is thus a public turncoat. Is
that the sort of man we want? He has been given the lie, and has
swallowed the insult. Is that the sort of man we want? I answer, No!
With all the force of my conviction, I answer, _No_!"

And then he signed and dated the letter with an amateur's pride, and
looked to be famous by the morrow.

Dick, who had heard nothing of the matter, was up first on that
inauspicious day, and took the journal to an arbour in the garden. He
found his father's manifesto in one column; and in another a leading
article. "No one that we are aware of," ran the article, "had consulted
Mr. Naseby on the subject, but if he had been appealed to by the whole
body of electors, his letter would be none the less ungenerous and
unjust to Mr. Dalton. We do not choo