This little accident did so much good that it enabled Mr. Brownlow to smile, and to shake off the oppression that weighed upon him. It was a relief to be able to question the applicant as to his capabilities, while secretly and rapidly in his own mind he turned over the matter, and asked himself what he should do. Discourage the young man and direct him elsewhere, and gently push him out of Masterton--or take him in and be kind to him, and trust in Providence? The panic of the moment suggested the first course, but a better impulse followed. In the first place, it was not easy to discourage a young fellow with those sanguine brown eyes, and blood that ran so quickly in his veins; and if any danger was at hand, it was best to have it near, and be able to study it, and be warned at once how and when it might approach. All this passed rapidly, like an under-current, through John Brownlow’s mind, as he sat and asked innumerable questions about the young applicant’s capabilities and antecedents. He did it to gain time, though all young Powys thought was that he had never gone through so severe an examination. The young fellow smiled within himself at the wonderful precision and caution of the old man, with a kind of transatlantic freedom--not that he was republican, but only colonial; not irritated by his employer’s superiority, but regarding it as an affair of perhaps only a few days or years. “I will think it over,” said Mr. Brownlow at last. “I can not decide upon any thing all at once. If you settle quietly down and get a situation, I think you may do very well here. It is not a dear place, and if your mother has friends--” “But she has no friends now that we know of,” said the young man, with the unnecessary and persistent explanatoriness of youth. “If she has friends here,” persisted Mr. Brownlow, “you may be sure they will turn up. Come back to me to-morrow. I will think it all over in the mean time, and give you my answer then. Powys--that is a very good name--there was a Lady Powys here some time ago, who was exceedingly good and kind to the poor. Perhaps it was she whom you sought--” “Oh, no,” said the young man, eagerly; “it was my mother’s people--a family called--” “I am afraid I have an engagement now,” said Mr. Brownlow; and then young Powys withdrew, with that quiet sense of shame and compunction which belongs only to his years. He, of course, as was natural, could see nothing of the tragic under-current. It appeared to him only that he was intruding his private affairs, in an unjustifiable way, on his probable patron--on the man who had been kind to him, and given him hope. “What an ass I am!” he said to himself as he went away, “as if he could take any interest in my mother’s friends.” And it troubled the youth all day to think that he had possibly wearied Mr. Brownlow by his explanations and iteration--an idea as mistaken as it was possible to conceive.