o keep mastery of her. A man to
whom ideas were of no value, except when wedded to immediate action;
essentially neat; demanding to be 'done well,' but capable of stoicism
if necessary; urbane, yet always in readiness to thrust; able only to
condone the failings and to compassionate the kinds of distress which
his own experience had taught him to understand. Such was Miltoun's
younger brother at the age of twenty-six.

Having noted that the glass was steady, he was about to seek the
stairway, when he saw at the farther end of the entrance-hall three
figures advancing arm-in-arm. Habitually both curious and wary, he
waited till they came within the radius of a lamp; then, seeing them to
be those of Miltoun and a footman, supporting between them a lame man,
he at once hastened forward.

"Have you put your knee out, sir? Hold on a minute! Get a chair,
Charles."

Seating the stranger in this chair, Bertie rolled up the trouser, and
passed his fingers round the knee. There was a sort, of loving-kindness
in that movement, as of a hand which had in its time felt the joints and
sinews of innumerable horses.

"H'm!" he said; "can you stand a bit of a jerk? Catch hold of him
behind, Eustace. Sit down on the floor, Charles, and hold the legs of
the chair. Now then!" And taking up the foot, he pulled. There was a
click, a little noise of teeth ground together; and Bertie said: "Good
man--shan't have to have the vet. to you, this time."

Having conducted their lame guest to a room in the Georgian corridor
hastily converted to a bedroom, the two brothers presently left him to
the attentions of the footman.

"Well, old man," said Bertie, as they sought their rooms; "that's put
paid to his name--won't do you any more harm this journey. Good plucked
one, though!"

The report that Courtier was harboured beneath their roof went the round
of the family before breakfast, through the agency of one whose practice
it was to know all things, and to see that others partook of that
knowledge, Little Ann, paying her customary morning visit to her
mother's room, took her stand with face turned up and hands clasping her
belt, and began at once.

"Uncle Eustace brought a man last night with a wounded leg, and Uncle
Bertie pulled it out straight. William says that Charles says he only
made a noise like this"--there was a faint sound of small chumping
teeth: "And he's the man that's staying at the Inn, and the stairs were
too narrow to carry