One day—ah well! Youth must have its dreams, and we all figure as heroes to ourselves in them some time in our lives.
CHAPTER V
A LEGACY
Oxford to London, London to Berrington. And arriving there to be greeted with the news that old Sir Henry was dying.
Shock enough for the young man to whom Sir Henry meant everything of affection in life. Ten years had passed since he had come, a raw, uncouth lad fresh from the little Irish village and his mother's death-bed.
Sir Henry had been as much bogey to him then as he had been thorn in flesh to Sir Henry. But the years had altered that,—years, and the story of his father.
That story had changed young Michael Berrington from a scapegrace lad into something of sterner, more manlike, mould; though, at twenty-four, he was known at Oxford as Hotspur Mike by reason of the devilry of his pranks. Yet it was a Hotspur who had won himself a certain honour, and there was no mud thrown against the name.
And Sir Henry had come to love this big, stalwart grandson of his, finding him true stuff, with Berrington honour to stiffen his backbone for all his wild Irish blood.
Michael's pranks were not those of a coward, and his grey eyes looked straight and fearless in owning a fault, punishment or no.