Yet Frank Hazeldean has stuff in him--a good heart, and strict honour. Fool though he seem, there is sound sterling sense in some odd corner of his brains, if one could but get at it. All he wants to save him from perdition is, to do what he has never yet done--viz., pause and think. But, to be sure, that same operation of thinking is not so easy for folks unaccustomed to it, as people who think--think! "I can't bear this," said Frank suddenly, and springing to his feet. "This woman, I cannot get her out of my head. I ought to go down to the governor's; but then if he gets into a passion and refuses his consent, where am I? And he will too, I fear. I wish I could make out what Randal advises. He seems to recommend that I should marry Beatrice at once, and trust to my mother's influence to make all right afterwards. But when I ask, '_Is_ that your advice?' he backs out of it. Well, I suppose he is right there. I can understand that he is unwilling, good fellow, to recommend anything that my father would disapprove. But still--" Here Frank stopped in his soliloquy, and did make his first desperate effort to--think! Now, O dear reader, I assume, of course, that thou art one of the class to which thought is familiar; and, perhaps, thou hast smiled in disdain or incredulity at that remark on the difficulty of thinking which preceded Frank Hazeldean's discourse to himself. But art thou quite sure that when thou hast tried to _think_ thou hast always succeeded? Hast thou not often been duped by that pale visionary simulacrum of thought which goes by the name of _reverie?_ Honest old Montaigne confessed that he did not understand that process of sitting down to think, on which some folks express themselves so glibly. He could not think unless he had a pen in his hand, and a sheet of paper before him; and so, by a manual operation, seized and connected the links of ratiocination. Very often has it happened to myself, when I have said to Thought peremptorily, "Bestir thyself--a serious matter is before thee--ponder it well--think of it," that that same Thought has behaved in the most refractory, rebellious manner conceivable--and instead of concentrating its rays into a single stream of light, has broken into all the desultory tints of the rainbow, colouring senseless clouds, and running off into the seventh heaven--so that after sitting a good hour by the clock, with brows as knit as if I was intent on squaring the circle, I have suddenly discovered that I might as well have gone comfortably to sleep--I have been doing nothing but dream--and the most nonsensical dreams! So when Frank Hazeldean, as he stopped at that meditative "But still"--and leaning his arm on the chimney-piece, and resting his face on his hand, felt himself at the grave crisis of life, and fancied he was going "to think on it," there only rose before him a succession of shadowy pictures. Randal Leslie with an unsatisfactory countenance, from