st respect for the
baronet's judgment.

Edmund loved a really well-kept stable, where hardly a straw escapes
beyond the plaited edges, where the paint is renewed and washed to the
highest possible pitch of cleanliness, and where a perpetual whish of
water and clanking of pails testify to a constant cleaning of
cobblestone yard and flagged pavement.

In the middle of Groombridge Castle stable-yard there was an oval of
perfect turf, and that was surrounded by soft, red gravel; then came
alternate squares of pavement and cobble-stones, on to which opened the
wide doors of coach-houses and stables and harness-rooms, and the back
gate of the stud-groom's house.

An old, white-haired, ruddy-faced man standing on the red gravel smiled
heartily when Sir Edmund appeared. The man was in plain clothes, with a
very upright collar and a pearl horseshoe-pin in his tie; his figure was
well-built, but showed unmistakably that his knees had been fixed in
their present shape by constant riding.

He touched his hat.

"How's the mare to-day, Akers?" asked Sir Edmund.

"Nicely, nicely; it's a splendid mash that, Sir Edmund. Old Hartley gave
me the recipe for that. He was stud-groom here longer than I have been,
in the old lord's day. He had hoped to have had his son to follow him,
but the lad got wild, and it couldn't be."

The old man sighed, and changed the conversation. "Will you come round
again, sir?"

"Yes," said Edmund; "I don't mind if I do. But you've got a son of your
own about the stable, haven't you?" he asked, as they turned towards the
other side of the yard.

"I had two, Sir Edmund," was the brief and melancholy answer. "Jimmy's
here, but the lad I thought most on, he went and enlisted in the war,
and he couldn't settle down again after that. Jimmy, he'll never rise to
my place--it would not be fair, and I wouldn't let his lordship give it
a thought--but the other one might have done it."

Sir Edmund felt some sympathy for the stay-at-home, whom he knew. "He
seems a cheerful, steady fellow."

"He's steady enough, and he's cheerful enough," said his father, in a
tone of great contempt; "but the other lad had talent--he had talent."

Both men had paused in the interest of their talk.

"My eldest son, Thomas, of whom I'm speaking, went to the war in the
same ship as General Sir David Bright, and there's a thing I'd like to
tell you about that, Sir Edmund. It never came into my head how curious
a thing it was til