tory?" I would ask.

"Well, not precisely that, maybe; they're calling it a drawn battle. But
I'm thinking 'tis Lord Cornwallis that's drawn. He's off to Wilmington,
they say, and I'm fain to hope we've seen the last o' him and his
reaving redcoats in these parts."

His words set me in a muse. I could never make out what he would be at,
telling me all this. But he had an object, well-defined, and presently
it showed its head.

"Ye're the laird o' the manor, now, Captain Ireton, with none to gainsay
ye," he went on. "So I've come to give ye an account o' my stewardship.
I made no doubt, all along, ye'd come back to your own when ye'd had
your fling wi' the Old Worldies, and so I've kept tab o' the poor bit
land for ye."

"Oh, you have?" said I, being so far out-brazened as to be incapable of
saying more.

"I have that--every plack and bawbee. 'Tis ten years come Michaelmas
since I took over the charge o' Appleby Hundred, and I'm ready to
account to ye for every season's crop--when ye'll pay down the bit
steward's fee."

"Truly," said I; "you are an honest man, Mr. Stair." Then, to humor him
to the top of his bent: "Haphazarding a guess, now; would this
accounting leave a balance in my favor, or in yours?"

He gave me a look like that of a costermonger weighing and measuring the
gullibility of his customer.

"Oh, aye; I'm no saying there mightn't be a bit siller coming to me; a
few hundred pounds, more or less--sterling, man, sterling; not Scots,"
he added hastily. And then, as if it were best to leave this nail as it
was driven, he changed the subject abruptly. "I've brought ye that last
will and testament ye signed," handing me the parchment. "No doubt
you'll let it stand; but when the bairns come, ye'll want to be adding a
codicil or two."

Leaving the matter of the estate, I thought it high time to cut to the
marrow of the bigger bone. So I said: "Let us be frank with each other
in this, Mr. Stair. How much has your daughter told you of the matter
between us?"

"She's a jade!" he rasped, lapsing for a moment into his real self. But
he recovered his self-control instantly. "Ye'd no expect a romantic bit
lassie wi' French blood in her veins to be confidencing wi' her old
dried-up wisp of a father, now, would ye? She's no tell't me everything,
I daresay."

"Then I will tell you the plain truth of it," I said. "This marriage was
never anything more than the form we all agreed it should be at the
time; a ma