t less price than my first
purchases. And then," cried Farfrae impetuously, his face alight, "I
sold it a few weeks after, when it happened to go up again! And so, by
contenting mysel' with small profits frequently repeated, I soon made
five hundred pounds--yes!"--(bringing down his hand upon the table, and
quite forgetting where he was)--"while the others by keeping theirs in
hand made nothing at all!"

Lucetta regarded him with a critical interest. He was quite a new type
of person to her. At last his eye fell upon the lady's and their glances
met.

"Ay, now, I'm wearying you!" he exclaimed.

She said, "No, indeed," colouring a shade.

"What then?"

"Quite otherwise. You are most interesting."

It was now Farfrae who showed the modest pink.

"I mean all you Scotchmen," she added in hasty correction. "So free from
Southern extremes. We common people are all one way or the other--warm
or cold, passionate or frigid. You have both temperatures going on in
you at the same time."

"But how do you mean that? Ye were best to explain clearly, ma'am."

"You are animated--then you are thinking of getting on. You are sad the
next moment--then you are thinking of Scotland and friends."

"Yes. I think of home sometimes!" he said simply.

"So do I--as far as I can. But it was an old house where I was born, and
they pulled it down for improvements, so I seem hardly to have any home
to think of now."

Lucetta did not add, as she might have done, that the house was in St.
Helier, and not in Bath.

"But the mountains, and the mists and the rocks, they are there! And
don't they seem like home?"

She shook her head.

"They do to me--they do to me," he murmured. And his mind could be seen
flying away northwards. Whether its origin were national or personal, it
was quite true what Lucetta had said, that the curious double strands
in Farfrae's thread of life--the commercial and the romantic--were very
distinct at times. Like the colours in a variegated cord those contrasts
could be seen intertwisted, yet not mingling.

"You are wishing you were back again," she said.

"Ah, no, ma'am," said Farfrae, suddenly recalling himself.

The fair without the windows was now raging thick and loud. It was the
chief hiring fair of the year, and differed quite from the market of a
few days earlier. In substance it was a whitey-brown crowd flecked with
white--this being the body of labourers waiting for places. The long
bonnets of th