I can mind," said Gilian, good-humouredly. "And somehow," he
added, "I have a notion that he has but half my brains as well as half
my chances." He looked up to see Turner still at the inn door. "General
Turner," he cried, his face reddening and his heart stormy, "I hear
that in your frank estimate I'm the Paymaster's failure; is it so bad as
that? It seems, if I may say it, scarcely fair from one of your years to
one of mine."

"Shut your mouth!" said the Paymaster coarsely, as Turner came forward.
"You have no right to repeat what I said and show the man I took his
insolence to heart."

"I said it; I don't deny," answered the General, coming forward from
the group at the door and putting his hand in a friendly freedom on the
horse's neck and looking up with some regret in Gilian's face. "One
says many things in an impetus. Excuse a soldier's extravagance. I never
meant it either for your ear or for unkindness. And you talk of ages:
surely a man so much your senior has a little privilege?"

"Not to judge youth, sir, which he may have forgotten to understand,"
said Gilian, yet very red and uneasy, but with a wistful countenance.
"If you'll think of it I'm just at the beginning of life, a little more
shy of making the plunge perhaps than Young Islay there might be, or
your own son Sandy, who's a credit to his corps, they say."

"Quite right, Gilian, and I ask your pardon," said the General, putting
out his hand. "God knows who the failures of this life are; some of them
go about very flashy semblances of success. In these parts we judge by
the external signs, that are not always safest; for my son Sandy, who
looks so thriving and so douce when he comes home, is after all a scamp
whose hands are ever in his simple daddy's pockets." But this he said
laughing, with a father's reservation.

The Paymaster stared at this encounter, in some ways so much beyond his
comprehension. "Humph!" he ejaculated; and Gilian rode on, leaving in
the group behind him an uncomfortable feeling that somehow, somewhere,
an injustice had been done.

Miss Mary's face was at the window whenever his horse's hooves came
clattering on the causeway--she knew the very clink of the shoes.
"There's something wrong with the laddie to-day," she cried to Peggy;
"he looks unco dejected;" and her own countenance fell in sympathy with
her darling's mood.

She met him on the stair as if by accident, pretending to be going
down to her cellar in the pend.