the condition for which I stipulate."

"Glad to hear it; and if you do come into parliament, I hope you'll not
turn your back on the land?"

"Turn my back on the land!" cried Randal, with devout horror. "Oh, sir,
I am not so unnatural!"

"That's the right way to put it," quoth the credulous squire; "it is
unnatural! It is turning one's back on one's own mother. The land is a
mother--"

"To those who live by her, certainly,--a mother," said Randal, gravely.
"And though, indeed, my father starves by her rather than lives, and
Rood Hall is not like Hazeldean, still--I--"

"Hold your tongue," interrupted the squire; "I want to talk to you. Your
grandmother was a Hazeldean."

"Her picture is in the drawing-room at Rood. People think me very like
her."

"Indeed!" said the squire. "The Hazeldeans are generally inclined to be
stout and rosy, which you are certainly not. But no fault of yours. We
are all as Heaven made us. However, to the point. I am going to alter
my will,"--(said with a choking gulp). "This is the rough draft for the
lawyers to work upon."

"Pray, pray, sir, do not speak to me on such a subject. I cannot bear to
contemplate even the possibility of--of--"

"My death? Ha, ha! Nonsense. My own son calculated on the date of it by
the insurance-tables. Ha, ha, ha! A very fashionable son, eh! Ha, ha!"

"Poor Frank! do not let him suffer for a momentary forgetfulness of
right feeling. When he comes to be married to that foreign lady, and be
a father himself, he--"

"Father himself!" burst forth the squire. "Father to a swarm of
sallow-faced Popish tadpoles! No foreign frogs shall hop about my
grave in Hazeldean churchyard. No, no. But you need not look so
reproachful,--I 'm not going to disinherit Frank."

"Of course not," said Randal, with a bitter curve in the lip that
rebelled against the joyous smile which he sought to impose on it.

"No; I shall leave him the life-interest in the greater part of
the property; but if he marry a foreigner, her children will not
succeed,--you will stand after him in that case. But--now don't
interrupt me--but Frank looks as if he would live longer than you, so
small thanks to me for my good intentions, you may say. I mean to do
more for you than a mere barren place in the entail. What do you say to
marrying?"

"Just as you please," said Randal, meekly.

"Good. There's Miss Sticktorights disengaged,--great heiress. Her lands
run onto Rood. At one time I thought o