s she pointed out the urgent
necessity of John's being seen and known by this uncle, whose only
relation and ostensible heir he was. She talked for long, wisely and
kindly--as mothers talk out of the unselfish fulness of their
hearts--and with every word the golden castles of her imagination rose
tower on tower to form the citadel in which her son was to reign
supreme.

So wisely and so lovingly did she talk that she persuaded not only the
boy, but herself, into the belief that he had but to reach Scotland to
make his inheritance sure; and before the day closed she wrote to Andrew
Henderson accepting his offer. A week later the whole light of her life
went out, as she watched the train steam out of the station, carrying
John northward.

Upon the days that followed his arrival in Scotland there is no need to
dwell. He came as a stranger, and as a stranger he was introduced by
his uncle to the routine of work expected of him. No mention was made of
his recent loss, no suggestion was given that his mother should make her
double bereavement easier by visits to her son. Whatever of hope or
sentiment he had brought with him, he was left to destroy or smother as
best he could.

The first week resolved itself into one round of boyish homesickness and
desolation; then gradually, as the marvellous healing properties of
youth began to stir, a new feeling awakened in his mind--a sense of
curiosity concerning the strange old man whom fate, by a twist of the
wheel, had made the arbiter of his life. Even to one so young and
inexperienced, it was impossible to know Andrew Henderson and not to
feel that some strange peculiarity set him apart from other men. In his
ascetic face, in his large, light-blue eyes, in his extraordinary air of
abstraction and aloofness from mundane things, there was something that
fascinated and repelled; and with a wondering interest the boy studied
these things, trying in his unformed way to reconcile them with his
narrow experience of human nature.

For many weeks he sought without success for some key to the attitude of
this new-found relative. Then one evening--when solution seemed least
near--the key, metaphorically speaking, fell at his feet. Returning home
from a ramble over the headland, his observant eye was caught by the
sight of a narrow foot-track that, crossing the main pathway of the
cliff, wound steeply upward and seemingly lost itself in a tangle of
gorse and bracken. Stirred by a boyish d