“They will never be filled now, Leonard,” said Tom, pointing to these; “curious, isn’t it, not to say sad?”
“Oh! I don’t know,” answered his brother; “I suppose that the Cohens boast some sort of arms, or if not they can buy them.”
“I should think that they would have the good taste to begin a new window for themselves,” said Tom.
Then he was silent for a while, and they watched the moonlight streaming through the painted window, the memorial of so much forgotten grandeur, and illumining the portraits of many a dead Outram that gazed upon them from the panelled walls.
“Per ardua ad astra,” said Tom, absently reading the family motto which alternated pretty regularly with a second device that some members of it had adopted—“For Heart, Home, and Honour.”
“‘Per ardua ad astra’—through struggle to the stars—and ‘For Heart, Home, and Honour,’” repeated Tom; “well, I think that our family never needed such consolations more, if indeed there are any to be found in mottoes. Our Heart is broken, our hearth is desolate, and our honour is a byword, but there remain the ‘struggle and the stars.’”
As he spoke his face took the fire of a new enthusiasm: “Leonard,” he went on, “why should not we retrieve the past? Let us take that motto—the more ancient one—for an omen, and let us fulfil it. I believe it is a good omen, I believe that one of us will fulfil it.”
“We can try,” answered Leonard. “If we fail in the struggle, at least the stars remain for us as for all human kind.”
“Leonard,” said his brother almost in a whisper, “will you swear an oath with me? It seems childish, but I think that under some circumstances there is wisdom even in childishness.”
“What oath?” asked Leonard.