u are the serpent who has broken up this peaceful home. I shall be
miserable for a month, and the house will be divided against itself.
Arthur has promised to help Stocks, while the Manorwaters, root and
branch, are pledged to support him."

"I'll do my best, Lewie, for old acquaintance' sake. It had to come
sooner or later, you know, and it is as well that you should seize the
favourable moment. Now let us drop the subject for to-night. I want to
enjoy myself."

And he rose, stretched his great arms, and wandered about the room.

To all appearance he had forgotten the very existence of things
political. Arthur, who had a contest to face shortly, was eager for
advice and the odds and ends of information which defend the joints in a
candidate's harness, but the well-informed man disdained to help. He
tested the guns, gave his verdict on rods, and ranged through a cabinet
of sporting requisites. Then he fell on his host's books, and for an
hour the three were content to listen to him. It was rarely that
Wratislaw fell into such moods, but when the chance came it was not to
be lightly disregarded. A laborious youth had given him great stores of
scholarship, and Lewis's books were a curious if chaotic collection. On
the fly-leaf of a little duodecimo was an inscription from the author of
Waverley, who had often made Etterick his hunting-ground. A Dunbar had
Hawthornden's autograph, and a set of tall classic folios bore the
handwriting of George Buchanan. Lord Kames, Hume, and a score of others
had dedicated works to lairds of Etterick, and the Haystouns themselves
had deigned at times to court the Muse. Lewis's own special
books-college prizes, a few modern authors, some well-thumbed poets, and
a row in half a dozen languages on some matters of diplomatic
interest-were crowded into a little oak bookcase which had once graced
his college rooms. Thither Wratislaw ultimately turned, dipping,
browsing, reading a score of lines.

"What a nice taste you have in arrangement!" he cried. "Scott, Tolstoi,
Meredith, an odd volume of a Saga library, an odd volume of the _Corpus
Boreale_, some Irish reprints, Stevenson's poems, Virgil and the
_Pilgrim's Progress_, and a French Gazetteer of Mountains wedged above
them. And then an odd Badminton volume, French _Memoires_, a Dante, a
Homer, and a badly printed German text of Schopenhauer! Three different
copies of Rabelais, a De Thou, a Horace, and-bless my soul!--about
twenty books of