"And your father has to go out into the world and start afresh?"
"We leave Hillside to-morrow. I'm going to St. Goram now, to see if the little cottage is ready. After to-morrow father starts life afresh, in his old age, having lost everything."
"But wasn't your father very foolish to risk his all on such a chance? Life is always such an uncertain thing."
"I think he was very foolish; and he thinks so now. But at the time he was very hopeful. He thought the cost of bringing the land under cultivation would be much less than it has proved to be. He hoped, too, that the crops would be much heavier. Then, you see, he was born in the parish, and he wanted to end his days in it—in a little home of his own."
"It seems very hard," she said, with a distant look in her eyes.
"It's terribly hard," he answered; "and made all the harder by the landlord letting the farm over father's head."
"He could have let you remain?"
"Of course he could, if he had been disposed to be generous, or even just."
"I've often heard that Lord St. Goram is a very hard man."
He started, and looked at her with a questioning light in his eyes.