accumulating every year, was entirely under the management of Mr.
Menteith; he himself took no interest in it; and the way by which the
former heirs of Cairnforth had used to make themselves popular from
boyhood, by going among the tenantry, hunting, shooting, fishing, and
boating, was impossible to this earl. His distant dependents hardly
remembered his existence, and he took no heed of theirs, until a few
months before he came of age, when one of these slight chances which
often determine so much changed the current of affairs.

If was just before the "term." Mr. Menteith had been expected all day,
but had not arrived, and the earl had taken a long drive with Helen and
her father through the Cairnforth woods, where the wild daffodils were
beginning to succeed the fading snowdrops, and the mavises had been
heard to sing those few rich notes which belong especially to the
twilights of early spring, and earnest of all the richness, and glory,
and delight of the year. The little party seemed to feel it--that
soft, dreamy sense of dawning spring, which stirs all the soul,
especially in youth, with a vague looking forward to some pleasantness
which never comes. They sat, silent and talking by turns, beside the
not unwelcome fire, in a corner of the large library.

"We shall miss Alick a good deal this spring," said Helen, recurring to
a subject of which the family heart was full, the departure of the
eldest son to "begin the world" in Mr. Menteith's office in Edinburg.
He was not a very clever lad, but he was sensible and steady, and
blessed with that practical mother-wit which is often better than
brains. The minister, though he had been bemoaning his boy's "little
Latin and less Greek," and comparing Alick's learning very
disadvantageously with that of the earl, to whom Mr. Cardross confided
all his troubles, nevertheless seemed both proud and hopeful of his