tyrannical?"

"Well, the newspapers say so, certainly."

"And, in short, your discretion can do no harm, and your indiscretion
may. Therefore, give me your word, Frank. I can't stay to argue now."

"I'll not allude to the Riccaboccas, upon my honour," answered Frank;
"still, I am sure that they would be as safe with the marchesa as
with--"

"I rely on your honour," interrupted Randal, hastily, and hurried off.

CHAPTER V.

Towards the evening of the following day, Randal Leslie walked slowly
from a village in the main road (about two miles from Rood Hall),
at which he had got out of the coach. He passed through meads and
cornfields, and by the skirts of woods which had formerly belonged to
his ancestors, but had been long since alienated. He was alone amidst
the haunts of his boyhood, the scenes in which he had first invoked the
grand Spirit of Knowledge, to bid the Celestial Still One minister to
the commands of an earthly and turbulent ambition. He paused often in
his path, especially when the undulations of the ground gave a glimpse
of the gray church tower, or the gloomy firs that rose above the
desolate wastes of Rood.

"Here," thought Randal, with a softening eye,--"here, how often,
comparing the fertility of the lands passed away from the inheritance
of my fathers, with the forlorn wilds that are left to their mouldering
Hall,--here how often have I said to myself, 'I will rebuild the
fortunes of my House.' And straightway Toil lost its aspect of drudge,
and grew kingly, and books became as living armies to serve my thought.
Again--again O thou haughty Past, brace and strengthen me in the battle
with the Future." His pale lips writhed as he soliloquized, for his
conscience spoke to him while he thus addressed his will, and its voice
was heard more audibly in the quiet of the rural landscape, than amidst
the turmoil and din of that armed and sleepless camp which we call a
city.

Doubtless, though Ambition have objects more vast and beneficent than
the restoration of a name, that in itself is high and chivalrous, and
appeals to a strong interest in the human heart. But all emotions and
all ends of a nobler character had seemed to filter themselves free
from every golden grain in passing through the mechanism of Randal's
intellect, and came forth at last into egotism clear and unalloyed.
Nevertheless, it is a strange truth that, to a man of cultivated mind,
however perverted and vicious, there are vo