e avenue. "He wants to
be a fine gentleman, and is ashamed of his father's portrait--an
ill-looking fellow enough, it must be admitted."

"Aye, I didn't like that," said Hendrick; "but he is a steady boy, and
may do well when the conceit has been taken out of him a wee bit."

"If only a 'wee bit' is taken, there will be what the people call a
good little wee lock left. But I sincerely hope, for his own sake,
that his pride will be taken out of him. He is insufferable."

CHAPTER VIII.

For the present, at least, Jim was elated with a pardonable pride in
his watch, and, after the manner of youths thus recently set up, he
looked at it again and again during his walk next morning across the
headlands to Ballycastle, where he had to catch the Ballymoney car,
thence to proceed to Ballymena by train. Ho was looking at his watch
for the hundredth time, and half smiling to himself at his rash and
boastful words as to making it the means of discovering his family
history, when a sudden thought occurred to him. He looked long and
eagerly at the watch, while his pale face flushed up. "I have it," he
muttered; "and if I'm right, I shall take down the minister a bit."

It was a long, tedious journey by foot and car and rail that lay before
him, and his patience was almost exhausted when he reached his
destination. Once arrived, he immediately sat down to write in his
humble lodgings. The watch bore the name of the maker, "John Turnwell,
Leeds, 7002." Was it not possible that a record had been preserved,
stating when and to whom the watch had been sold. Ho did not know
whether such was the practice, but at all events he would inquire. A
brief note was soon written and left ready for the morning mail; then
the tired and excited lad went to bed, and dreamed of a beautiful lady
who said she was his mother, and that his father was a lord, and had
been murdered by the repulsive-looking man in the locket; and then a
carriage and pair came thundering up to his lodgings, and his employer
stood in the hall as he passed down, and congratulated him, and called
him "my lord." Then he thought he saw the man in the locket looking at
him with hard, cold mouth, and then the face grew smaller till it
shrunk into the locket, and it was open on the breast of the dead woman
as she lay on the sands; and he saw himself and Elsie standing by the
body. In a moment he passed into the little figure, and felt himself
turning to call Mike