Only when he was alone would passionate tears come, choking sobs that shook the boy’s body and were succeeded by stoniness. Sorrow may melt the heart like dew; rebellion breaks it. Night after night, prostrate upon the floor of her room, Mrs. Farquharson would pray for her son with tears of blood, as one who would wrest grace from the Almighty. And night after night, in his attic, Richard would lie awake, lonely and impenitent, thinking himself loveless and neglected while love was burning at his very door. *CHAPTER III* "Not So much as even the lifting of a latch, Merely a step into the outer air."—LONGFELLOW. The picture-gallery ranked high in Richard’s list of compensations. Although it was the sanctuary of fine records, he always associated it with the last definite memory of his elder brother. Two or three days before Douglas chose that easy way of shifting responsibilities which it takes a brave man or woman to evade, Richard had been carried pick-a-back by his elder brother down the long gallery; had been shown, with a certain solemnity, pathetic in view of what was so soon to occur, portrait upon portrait of their ancestors, notably men who were famous for good rather than great deeds. There were two especial portraits before which they lingered, Richard remembered afterwards—that of their great-great-grandfather, upon whose tomb, by the wish of his country and his tenantry, the motto, "Noble by birth, noble in all things else," had been engraved; and one of his wife, known in her day as "The Ivory Mayde," because of the dazzling fairness of her skin. A contemporary poet wrote of her— "Snow her fayre body—snowier white her soul." "Something worth while, old chap, to have that said of one," Douglas had commented, and Richard, bored at the delay, overcome by the gloom and seclusion of the gallery, and long array of still figures in unaccustomed clothes; remembered butting at him with his head until his brother cried out for mercy and moved on. The portraits—the knights in armour who guarded the entrance to the rooms so jealously, awed him still, but not as of old. They were his friends now, like the squirrels, and passionate love and pride thrilled him each time he entered the gallery. The deeds they had done, the records they had left, few even in Scotland could match. The blood they shed made a sea of glory which reflected the light of God; merely to cross the threshold was an act of faith. Richard could have prayed to some of these more easily than to an unknown God. He knew their histories, man for man, woman for woman. Before some he habitually paused longer than before others. Had the veil invisible between that world and his been rent, and the familiar shades taken fleshly form before his eyes, and called to him, he would not have known fear. He was theirs and they were his; he faced them buoyantly, with head erect.