"His name is Farquharson," said Creagh. "He was once Farquharson of Glune; his brother’s story must be familiar to you all. I fancy things have always gone dramatically with him. He ran away from home at twelve years old; just how he kept body and soul together for the next few years no one knows. Then—through some accident—he came across and was of service to Martin Calvert, the millionaire who had just disinherited his heir, Jack Cummings, for becoming a Catholic." Beadon whistled. "The man who did so well in the last Indian famine business? A secular priest, isn’t he? Self-exiled to the most fever-stricken district in the country?" "Yes." Creagh hesitated. "It was a case of what is so often called ’The foolishness of the Cross.’ Well, from a human point of view it certainly resulted in one man’s loss and another man’s gain. Calvert, like David, was cursing God in his heart when he met Farquharson. As for the lad—well, you know some of you how he was brought up in that stern Scotch school which begets defiance of God and enmity of man under some circumstances. I think the fact that Farquharson had thrown off every scrap of faith in things Divine and human appealed to Calvert doubly at that moment, and strengthened his desire to keep him. The Cummings episode was a bad blow." "So he put Mr. Farquharson in his nephew’s place?" said Evelyn. Creagh nodded. "He carried him off, then and there, put him through his paces with some elementary work to see what he was capable of, then gave him the lowest place in the office, kept him at the mill, ground from him his last grain of work, like the hardest taskmaster, led him on by successive rises to his own private secretaryship, and then shipped him to Taorna and gave him a magnificent chance of making name and fortune." Hare rose, grumbling. "Don’t pin your faith on such a broken reed. You’ll make a mistake. The man’s had things too easily. What age is he? Thirty? I thought so. Why, a man worth calling a man ought to contest every inch of the way until he’s forty; the law of the survival of the fittest obtains in politics as elsewhere. There ought to be an injunction to prevent people coming into money easily—money, in any case, mars ten men for the one it makes. While Calvert’s alive to keep him in order, your young man may possibly play the game for a bit, and even achieve a certain success. Mark my words, after Calvert’s death his _protégé_ will marry some designing woman, who will use him as the means to a title, and gratify her ambition at the cost of his career." "Or one who makes him happy," said Beadon grimly. "That’s quite as bad, although more rare." Creagh shrugged his shoulders.