breakfast-table. Ruth pushed back her chair at the sound of his footsteps and rose to her feet. "Why, Ralph," she said, "where have you been? Mother's been quite worried about you." "If that's all she has to worry her, she needn't worry much," he said, with a laugh. "But has anything happened? You all look desperately sober." "We've heard some news that has made us all feel very anxious," David answered wearily. "We've sat here talking about it for the last half-hour." "Then the news concerns us all?" Ralph questioned, with a catch in his voice. "Very closely, my boy—very closely. The truth is, Julian Seccombe has got wounded out in Egypt." "And he's the last life on the farm?" Ralph questioned, with a gasp. "That is so, my boy. It seems strange that I should be so unfortunate in the choice of lives, and yet I could not have been more careful. Who could have thought that the parson's boy would become a soldier?" "Life is always uncertain," Ralph answered, with a troubled look in his eyes, "whether a man is a soldier or a farmer." "That is so," David answered reflectively. "Yet my father held his little place on only two lives, and one of them lived to be seventy-five." "But, even then, I've heard you say the lease ran only a little over sixty years. It's a wicked gamble, is this leasehold system, with the chances in favour of the landlord." "Why a gamble in favour of the landlord, my boy?" David questioned, lifting his mild eyes to his son's face. "Why, because if all the 'lives' live out their threescore years and ten, the lease is still a short one; for you don't start with the first year of anyone's life." "That is true," David answered sadly. "The parson's boy was ten, which I thought would be balanced by the other two." "And the other two did not live ten years between them." "Of course, nobody could foresee that," David answered sadly. "They were both healthy children. Our little Billy was three, and the healthiest baby of the lot." "But with all the ailments of children in front of him?"
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