between me and what I felt to be the Right, more
than once. You don't know what that thought has been, or you would not
challenge it against me now."

"Well, well,--I only want you to look on all sides of what you are about
to do, and to count the cost beforehand."

Everett smiled quietly. As if "the cost" were not already counted, felt,
and suffered in that deep heart of his! But he said nothing.

"In the next place, what do you propose to do?" pursued his brother.
"Will you enter a profession? Can't say you're much adapted for a
lawyer; and perhaps you're too tender-hearted for a doctor, either. But
I remember, as a boy, you always said you should like to be a clergyman.
And, by Jove! when one comes to think of it, you've a good deal of the
cut of the village priest about you. What do you say to that?"

"Nothing. I have other plans." And Everett proceeded briefly to tell him
these. He had heard from Charles Barclay, now high in the confidence of
one of the leading mercantile firms of Montreal; and through him, he had
obtained the offer of an appointment in the same house.

Richard Gray listened to all this, with ill-concealed amusement
twitching the corners of his mouth. He thought the idea of his brother's
turning man-of-business one of the "richest" he had ever heard.

"With your hard head and shrewd notions, I should say you were likely to
make a sensation in the mercantile world," he observed. "It's a hopeful
scheme, altogether. Oh, hang it!" proceeding from sarcasm to
remonstrance, "that'll never do, Everett! You'll be getting into some
precious scrape or other. You're not the fellow for a merchant's office,
trust me. Now something in the way of a government appointment is much
more like it. A pleasant, poetical sort of sinecure,--there are lots of
them to be had. You just trundle down for an hour or two every day,
write letters, or poems, or whatever you like, with the official
stationery, and receive your salary quarterly. You _can't_ do any
mischief in a place like that. Now that's the sort of thing for you,--if
one could get hold of some of those fellows in power. Why!" brightening
with the sudden dash of an idea, "there are the Beauchamps themselves!
They've a legion of influential relatives. Couldn't they get you into a
snug berth? Oh, the Devil!"--for Everett's look was not to be
mistaken,--"if you bring your high-flown ideas of dignity and
independence into this plain, practical question of subsisten