hey've been left a month or two in the
summer, and got pretty ripe, they aren't so nice as bean-fields in
bloom, or the young missus's roses in her bit o' garden; but pigsties
aren't nothing to that there _egg_. It's enough to pyson a black dog."

"Be off with you, then," said the old man, with a dry chuckle; and as
soon as he was alone, he threw the foul water away. "Yes," he muttered,
"it does smell; but that's a splendid egg, and not stained a bit."

"Hah!" he ejaculated a few minutes later. "I'd have given something to
be there. Brave lads. True English, to the backbone; but with their
young minds warped and spoiled by the traditions of this miserable feud.
Why, it must have been grand," mused the old man, shaking his grey
locks. "How I should have liked to see and hear it all! What a fight
to master the inborn hatred! On both sides the evil contending with the
good; and, according to that man's telling, that boy Mark did not show
up well. I don't know, though! He could not help it. He had to fight
the black blood in his veins that has been handed down for generations.
So young Ralph saved his life, made him prisoner, and set him at liberty
like a true honest gentleman; and the other had to battle with his
dislike and bitterness at receiving a favour from his enemy's hands.

"Good Heavens!" he cried aloud. "Enemy's! What contemptible worms we
are, to dare to nurse up such a feeling from father to son, generation
after generation! Why, with them it is an hereditary disease. But who
knows? Those two lads may grow up to be friends, and kill the old feud.
They cannot help respecting each other after such an encounter as that.
I'll try and get hold of young Darley, and then of Mark; and perhaps I
may be able to--Bah! you weak-minded, meddlesome old driveller!" he
cried impetuously. "You would muddle, and spoil all, when perhaps a
Higher Hand is at work, as it always is, to make everything tend toward
the best.

"But I should like to be present, by accident, the next time those two
lads meet."

The meeting took place before many days had passed.

In the interim Ralph Darley had told his father all that had happened,
and Sir Morton had frowned, and looked pleased, and frowned again.

"You think I did wrong father," said the lad.

"No, my boy; I think you behaved splendidly; but you see what a
miserable race those Edens are. You do good to one of them, a boy of
your own age, and he is ready to turn