"All right!" repeated Aram, fixing his eyes on the Corporal, who had concluded his speech with a significant wink, and pausing a full moment before he continued, then as if satisfied with his survey, he added: "Ay, ay, I know whom you mean; he had known me some years ago. So you saw him! What said he to you of me?" "Augh! little enough, Master Aram, he seemed to think only of satisfying his own appetite; said he'd been a soldier." "A soldier, humph!" "Never told me the regiment, though,--shy--did he ever desert, pray, your honour?" "I don't know;" answered Aram, turning away. "I know little, very little, about him!" He was going away, but stopped to add: "The man called on me last night for assistance; the lateness of the hour a little alarmed me. I gave him what I could afford, and he has now proceeded on his journey." "Oh, then, he won't take up his quarters hereabouts, your honour?" said the Corporal, inquiringly. "No, no; good evening." "What! this singular stranger, who so frightened my poor girls, is really known to you;" said Lester, in surprise: "pray is he as formidable as he seemed to them?" "Scarcely," said Aram, with great composure; "he has been a wild roving fellow all his life, but--but there is little real harm in him. He is certainly ill-favoured enough to--" here, interrupting himself, and breaking into a new sentence, Aram added: "but at all events he will frighten your nieces no more--he has proceeded on his journey northward. And now, yonder lies my way home. Good evening." The abruptness of this farewell did indeed take Lester by surprise. "Why, you will not leave me yet? The young ladies expect your return to them for an hour or so! What will they think of such desertion? No, no, come back, my good friend, and suffer me by and by to walk some part of the way home with you." "Pardon me," said Aram, "I must leave you now. As to the ladies," he added, with a faint smile, half in melancholy, half in scorn, "I am not one whom they could miss;--forgive me if I seem unceremonious. Adieu." Lester at first felt a little offended, but when he recalled the peculiar habits of the Scholar, he saw that the only way to hope for a continuance of that society which had so pleased him, was to indulge Aram at first in his unsocial inclinations, rather than annoy him by a troublesome hospitality; he therefore, without further discourse, shook hands with him, and they parted. When Lester regained the little parlour, he found his nephew sitting, silent and discontented, by the window. Madeline had taken up a book, and Ellinor, in an opposite corner, was plying her needle with an air of earnestness and quiet, very unlike her usual playful and cheerful vivacity. There was evidently a cloud over the groupe; the good Lester regarded them with a searching, yet kindly eye.