de. It suited Hugh's
ideas, too, but with one difference. He knew two or three things that
Archie did not know. He had not come back a very rich man, according to
his ideas of riches, though he knew the people about him might call him
rich. He had come home with no plan of remaining, for he was a young
man still, and looked upon the greater part of his life's work as before
him. And through the talk he was keeping up with Archie as they went
on, there was running all the time the question, "Should the rest of his
work be done in India or in Glen Elder?" It was not an easy question to
answer. He felt, with great unhappiness, that, whatever the answer
might be, it must give his mother pain.

One thing he had determined upon. His mother was to be again the
mistress of Glen Elder. This might be brought to pass in one of two
ways. He could lease the farm, as his forefathers had done, and be a
farmer, as they had been, living a far easier life than they had lived,
however, because of the means he had acquired during the last ten years.
Or, he could purchase Glen Elder, and invest the rest of his fortune
for the benefit of his mother and his little cousins, and then go back
to his business in India again. He thought his mother would like the
first plan best; but it did not seem the best to him.

He was afraid of himself. He had never, in his youth, liked a quiet,
rural life, and his manner of life for the past ten years had not been
such as to prepare him to like it better. He feared that he could never
settle down contented and useful in such a life; and he knew that an
unwilling sacrifice would never make his mother happy. And, yet, would
it be right to leave her, feeble and aged as she was? Of course his
going away would be different now. He would leave her in comfortable
circumstances, with no doubt about his fate, no fears as to his
well-doing, to harass her. But even in such a case it would not be
right to go away without her full and free consent.

It spoiled the pleasure of his walk--that and some other thoughts he
had; and he sighed as he sat down to rest on a bank where he had often
rested when a child.

"I can fancy us all living very happily here, if some things were
different," he said at last.

"What things, Cousin Hugh?" asked Archie, in some surprise.

Hugh laughed.

"I ought to have said, `if I were different myself,' I suppose."

"But you _are_ different," said Archie.

"Yes," said