"The only way you were ever likely to attain to one. Left to your own exertions, you'd have got back here with holes in your breeches."
"Now don't you be personal, sir," was the laughing rejoinder. "I'm Sir Roland Yorke, you know."
"And a fine Sir Roland you'll be!"
"I'll try and be a good one," said Roland emphatically, as he caught Arthur's eye--who was seated in the place of state as the head of the office, for the proctor had virtually resigned it. "Arthur knows he can trust me now: ask him, else, sir. Hamish knew it also before he died."
"I should like to hear what business he had to die, and who killed him?" cried old Galloway explosively. "It was done amongst you, I know. A nice thing for my old friend Mr. Huntley to get back to England and find his son-in-law dead: the bright, true young fellow that he loved as the apple of his eye."
"Yes, I think he was killed among us, up there," sadly avowed Roland, his honest face kindling with shame. "But I did not help in it, Mr. Galloway; I'd have given my life to save his. I wish I could!"
"Wishes won't bring him back. I saw his wife yesterday--his widow, that is. I'm sure I couldn't bear to look at her."
"Did you see sweet little Nelly?" cried Roland eagerly, his thoughts taking a turn. "If ever I have a girl of my own I hope she'll be like that child."
"Now just you please to take yourself off, Sir Roland, and come in when we're a little less busy," returned the proctor, who was very much out of sorts that morning. "You are hindering business, just as you used to do."
But perhaps the greatest of all small delights was that of encountering Mr. Butterby. Roland had just emerged from the market house one Saturday, where he had been in the thick of the throng, making himself at home, and inquiring affably the price of butter of all the faces he remembered, and been seduced into buying a tough old gander, on the grave assurance that it was a young and tender goose, when he and the detective met face to face.