for serious talk. Hence, when he found
him saying very plainly what had for long been a suspicion of his own,
he was willing to credit him with a new acuteness.

"You know I've always backed Lewie to romp home some day," went on the
young man. "He has got it in him to do most things, if he doesn't jib
and bolt altogether."

"I don't see why you should talk of your friends as if they were
racehorses or prize dogs."

"Well, there's a lot of truth in the metaphor. You know yourself what a
mess of it he might make. Say some good woman got hold of him--some
good woman, for we will put aside the horrible suggestion of the
adventuress. I suppose he'd be what you call a 'good husband.' He would
become a magistrate and a patron of local agricultural societies and
flower shows. And eveybody would talk about him as a great success in
life; but we--you and I and Tommy--who know him better, would feel that
it was all a ghastly failure."

Mr. Lewis Haystoun's character erred in its simplicity, for it was at
the mercy of every friend for comment.

"What makes you dread the women so?" asked Arthur with a smile.

"I don't dread 'em. They are all that's good, and a great deal better
than most men. But then, you know, if you get a man really first-class
he's so much better than all but the very best women that you've got to
look after him. To ordinary beggars like myself it doesn't matter a
straw, but I won't have Lewie throwing himself away."

"Then is the ancient race of the Haystouns to disappear from the earth?"

"Oh, there are women fit for him, sure enough, but you won't find them
at every garden party. Why, to find the proper woman would be the
making of the man, and I should never have another doubt about him. But
I am afraid. He's a deal too kindly and good-natured, and he'd marry a
girl to-morrow merely to please her. And then some day quite casually
he would come across the woman who was meant by Providence for him, and
there would be the devil to pay and the ruin of one good man. I don't
mean that he'd make a fool of himself or anything of that sort, for he's
not a cad; but in the middle of his pleasant domesticity he would get a
glimpse of what he might have been, and those glimpses are not
forgotten."

"Why, George, you are getting dithyrambic," said Arthur, still smiling,
but with a new vague respect in his heart.

"For you cannot harness the wind or tie--tie the bonds of the wild ass,"
said George, with an air