than fear, that love might
mold as well, if not better, than fear."

"Ay, if love had a chance to mold," answered Ashley, with more
animation, but the mask of reserve fell quickly over his features.
"Enough of me and my affairs, though. How is it with you? Have you won
the lady of your own heart's desire? When last I saw you, you were
lamenting, the obduracy of some fair one, if I remember right."

"Alas and alack, no, I've not won her," mourned Lindley, his Irish
eyes and his Irish lips losing their laughter. "I'm in a fair way
never to win her, I think. In my case, though, it's the father that's
wax in the daughter's hands. 'Tis a long time since he gave his
consent to my wooing the maid, but the maid will not be wooed. She
knows how to have her own way, and has always known it and always had
it, too. She tyrannized over me when she was a lass of six and I was a
lad of ten. Now she will not even meet me. When I visit at her house,
she locks herself in her own chamber, and even I lose heart when it
comes to wooing a maid through a wooden door. Ay, I tried it once, and
only once. To my last letter, a hot, impassioned love letter, her only
reply was to ask whether I still would turn white at a cock fight. The
minx remembers well enough that I did turn white at a fight between
two gamecocks, which she, mind you, had arranged in her father's
barnyard at that same time, when she was six and I was ten."

"Well, I wish you luck," answered Ashley, who had given little heed to
Lindley's words. "But to my mind such a maid would not be worth the
wooing. 'Tis to be hoped that Treadway has cleared Farquhart's addled
wits as well as he has cleared his voice," he added, after a moment's
silence.

Floating down from Lord Farquhart's room came the last words of the
song to Sylvia.

Hearts that beat with love so true!
Sylvia, sweet, I come to you!

Yet at that very instant, in young Treadway's room, Lord Farquhart was
snoring in unison with young Treadway. Lord Farquhart's head was
pillowed next to the head of young Treadway. And, stranger yet, at
that very instant, too, there sprang from Lord Farquhart's window a
figure strangely resembling Lord Farquhart himself, decked out in Lord
Farquhart's riding clothes, that had been cast aside after the miry
ride from London town, and tucked away in one corner of Lord
Farquhart's room were the dark riding coat and breeches of the youth
who had slumbered before the hearth of The Jol