serted; now and then
a straggler from the ballroom looked in for a moment, and then sauntered
back to the central place of attraction.

"I ain trying to guess," said I, "how my name should be known to you.
Possibly you may, in some visit to the Lakes, have known my father?"

"No; I know none of your name but yourself,--if, indeed, as I doubt not,
you are the Allen Fenwick to whom I owe no small obligation. You were a
medical student at Edinburgh in the year ----?"

"Yes."

"So! At that time there was also at Edinburgh a young man, named Richard
Strahan. He lodged in a fourth flat in the Old Town."

"I remember him very well."

"And you remember, also, that a fire broke out at night in the house
in which he lodged; that when it was discovered there seemed no hope
of saving him. The flames wrapped the lower part of the house; the
staircase had given way. A boy, scarcely so old as himself, was the only
human being in the crowd who dared to scale the ladder that even then
scarcely reached the windows from which the smoke rolled in volumes;
that boy penetrated into the room, found the inmate almost insensible,
rallied, supported, dragged him to the window, got him on the
ladder,--saved his life then: and his life later, by nursing with a
woman's tenderness, through the fever caused by terror and excitement,
the fellow-creature he had rescued by a man's daring. The name of that
gallant student was Allen Fenwick, and Richard Strahan is my nearest
living relation. Are we friends now?"

I answered confusedly. I had almost forgotten the circumstances referred
to. Richard Strahan had not been one of my more intimate companions, and
I bad never seen nor heard of him since leaving college. I inquired what
had become of him.

"He is at the Scotch Bar," said Sir Philip, "and of course without
practice. I understand that he has fair average abilities, but no
application. If I am rightly informed, he is, however, a thoroughly
honourable, upright man, and of an affectionate and grateful
disposition."

"I can answer for all you have said in his praise. He had the qualities
you name too deeply rooted in youth to have lost them now."

Sir Philip remained for some moments in a musing silence; and I took
advantage of that silence to examine him with more minute attention than
I had done before, much as the first sight of him had struck me.

He was somewhat below the common height,--so delicately formed that one
might call him ra