l try hard to be as good as I can. And I shall be always beside
you. Remember your promise."

This was, that after he came of age, and ended his university career,
instead of taking "the grand tour," like most young heirs of the period,
Cardross should settle down at home, in the character of of Lord
Cairnforth's private secretary--always at hand, and ready in every
possible way to lighten the burden of business which, even as a young
man, the earl had found heavy enough, and as an old man he would be
unable to bear.

"I shall never be clever, I know that," pleaded the lad, who was
learning a touching humility, "but I may be useful; and oh! if you would
but use me, in any thing or every thing, I'd work day and night for you
--I would indeed!"

"I know you would, my son" (earl sometimes called him "my son" when they
were by themselves), "and so you shall."

That evening Lord Cairnforth dictated to Helen, by her boy's hand, one
of his rare letters, telling her that he and Cardross would return home
in time for the latter's birthday, which would be in a month from now,
and which he wished kept with all the honors customary to the coming of
age of an heir of Cairnforth.

"Heir of Cairnforth!" The lad started, and stopped writing.

"It must be so, my son; I wish it. After your mother, you are my heir,
and I shall honor you as such; afterward you will return here alone, and
stay till the session is over; then come back, and live with me at the
Castle, and fit yourself in every way to become--what I can now wholly
trust you to be--the future master of Cairnforth."

And so, as soon as the earl's letter reached the peninsula, the
rejoicings began. The tenantry knew well enough who the earl had fixed
upon to come after him, but his was his first public acknowledgment of
the fact. Helen's position, as heiress presumptive, was regarded as
merely nominal; it was her son, the fine young fellow whom every body
knew from his babyhood, toward whom the loyalty of the little community
blazed up in a height of feudal devotion that was touching to see. The
warm Scotch heart--all the warmer, perhaps, for a certain narrowness
and clannishness, which in its pride would probably, nay, certainly,
have shut itself up against a stranger or an inferior--opened freely
to "Miss Helen's" son and the minister's grandson, a young man known to
all and approved of by all.

So the festivity was planned to be just the earl's coming of age ov