is father's
table (when the time came for him to join these revels) he turned pale
and sickened in silence. Of all the guests whom he there encountered, he
had toleration for only one: David Keith Carnegie, Lord Glenalmond. Lord
Glenalmond was tall and emaciated, with long features and long delicate
hands. He was often compared with the statue of Forbes of Culloden in
the Parliament House; and his blue eye, at more than sixty, preserved
some of the fire of youth. His exquisite disparity with any of his
fellow-guests, his appearance as of an artist and an aristocrat stranded
in rude company, riveted the boy's attention; and as curiosity and
interest are the things in the world that are the most immediately and
certainly rewarded, Lord Glenalmond was attracted by the boy.

"And so this is your son, Hermiston?" he asked, laying his hand on
Archie's shoulder. "He's getting a big lad."

"Hout!" said the gracious father, "just his mother over again--daurna
say boo to a goose!"

But the stranger retained the boy, talked to him, drew him out, found in
him a taste for letters, and a fine, ardent, modest, youthful soul; and
encouraged him to be a visitor on Sunday evenings in his bare, cold,
lonely dining-room, where he sat and read in the isolation of a bachelor
grown old in refinement. The beautiful gentleness and grace of the old
judge, and the delicacy of his person, thoughts, and language, spoke to
Archie's heart in its own tongue. He conceived the ambition to be such
another; and, when the day came for him to choose a profession, it was
in emulation of Lord Glenalmond, not of Lord Hermiston, that he chose
the Bar. Hermiston looked on at this friendship with some secret pride,
but openly with the intolerance of scorn. He scarce lost an opportunity
to put them down with a rough jape; and, to say truth, it was not
difficult, for they were neither of them quick. He had a word of
contempt for the whole crowd of poets, painters, fiddlers, and their
admirers, the bastard race of amateurs, which was continually on his
lips. "Signor Feedle-eerie!" he would say. "O, for Goad's sake, no more
of the Signor!"

"You and my father are great friends, are you not?" asked Archie once.

"There is no man that I more respect, Archie," replied Lord Glenalmond.
"He is two things of price: he is a great lawyer, and he is upright as
the day."

"You and he are so different," said the boy, his eyes dwelling on those
of his old friend, like a l