that defied the hard usage of a hard world!

After a space he came to the door and called, and took me by the hand,
and I went in with him. Though his eyes were wet, he bore himself like a
cavalier.

"Mother, this is Mr. Richard Carvell heir to Carvel Hall in Maryland,--a
young gentleman whom I have had the honour to rescue from a slaver."

I bowed low, such was my respect for Dame Paul, and she rose and
curtseyed. She wore a widow's cap and a black gown, and I saw in her
deep-lined face a resemblance to her son.

"Madam," I said, the title coming naturally, "I owe Captain Paul a debt
I can never repay."

"An' him but a laddie!" she cried. "I'm thankful, John, I'm thankful for
his mither that ye saved him."

"I have no mother, Madam Paul," said I, "and my father was killed in the
French war. But I have a grandfather who loves me dearly as I love him."

Some impulse brought her forward, and she took both my hands in her own.

"Ye'll forgive an auld woman, sir," she said, with a dignity that
matched her son's, "but ye're sae young, an' ye hae sic a leuk in yere
bonny gray e'e that I ken yell aye be a true friend o' John's. He's been
a guid sin to me, an' ye maunna reek what they say o' him."

When now I think of the triumph John Paul has achieved, of the scoffing
world he has brought to his feet, I cannot but recall that sorrowful
evening in the gardener's cottage, when a son was restored but to
be torn away. The sisters came in from their day's work,--both
well-favoured lasses, with John's eyes and hair,--and cooked the simple
meal of broth and porridge, and the fowl they had kept so long against
the captain's home-coming. He carved with many a light word that cost
him dear. Did Janet reca' the simmer nights they had supped here, wi'
the bumclocks bizzin' ower the candles? And was Nancy, the cow, still
i' the byre? And did the bees still give the same bonnie hiney, and were
the red apples still in the far orchard? Ay, Meg had thocht o' him that
autumn, and ran to fetch them with her apron to her face, to come back
smiling through her tears. So it went; and often a lump would rise in
my throat that I could not eat, famished as I was, and the mother and
sisters scarce touched a morsel of the feast.

The one never failing test of a son, my dears, lies in his treatment of
his mother, and from that hour forth I had not a doubt of John Paul. He
was a man who had seen the world and become, in more than one meaning of