he said.

“Ay, and, later on try to wash ’em of burning brimstone, maister—it sticks, and it burns, does the hell-fire you used to know.”

There is something in a man deeper than his own schooling of himself—a something stubborn, not to be denied, that springs from the graves where his forefathers lie. To-night,[42] as he watched Eli’s grim mouth, the clean-shaven upper lip standing out above his stubby beard, as he listened to his talk of brimstone, he was no longer Underwood, debonair and glib of tongue. He was among his own people again—so much among them that he seemed now, not only to see Rigstones Chapel, but to be living the old life once more, in the little house, near the watermill that had earned the beginnings of his grandfather’s riches. Thought by thought, impulse by impulse, he was divided from these folk of later years—the men and women who hunted, dined, and danced, with the single purpose behind it all—the single hope that one day they would be privileged to give up all, on the instant call, for loyalty to the King who reigned in fact, if not in name. To-night, with Eli’s ledger-like, hard face before him, Underwood yielded to the narrower and more barren teaching that had done duty for faith’s discipline at Rigstones Chapel. And yet he would not admit as much.

[42]

“You’re a sly old sinner, Eli,” he said, with a make-believe of the large, rollicking air which he affected.

The bailiff, glancing at his master’s face, knew that he had prevailed. “Ay, just thereby,” he said, his face inscrutable and hard. “But one way or another, I mean to keep free o’ brimstone i’ the next world. It’s all a matter o’ business, and I tell ye so.”

Underwood went out into the frosty, moonlit night, and paced up and down the house-front. His forebears had given him one cleanly gift, at least—he needed always, when in the thick of trouble, to get away from house-walls, out into the open. The night was clear, between one storm and the next, and the seven lamps of Charlie’s Wain swung high above his head. He had to make his choice, once for all, and knew it—the choice between the gospel of self-help and the wider creed that sends men out to a simple, catholic sacrifice of houseroom and good living.

He looked at the matter from every side, business-like as his father before him. There were many pledges he had given[43] that he would join his intimates when the summons came. If they returned from setting a Stuart on the throne, the place he had won among them would be 

 Prev. P 35/322 next