And now he had to go home and to tell Madam Flemington that he had wantonly thrown away all the advantages gained in the last three days, that he had tossed them to the wind for a mere sentimental scruple! So far he had never quarrelled with his occupation; but now, because it had brought him up against a soldier of fortune whose existence he had been unaware of a few weeks ago, he had sacrificed it and played a sorry trick on his own prospects at the same time. He was trusted and valued by his own party, and, in spite of his youth, had given it excellent service again and again. He could hardly expect the determined woman who had made him what he was to see eye to eye with him. Christian Flemington had kept her supremacy over her grandson. Parental authority was a much stronger thing in the mid-eighteenth century than it is now, and she stood in the position of a parent to him. His French blood and her long residence in France had made their relationship something like that of a French mother and son, and she had all his confidence in his young man's scrapes, for she recognized phases of life that are apt to be ignored by English parents in dealing with their children. She had cut him loose from her apron-strings early, but she had moulded him with infinite care before she let him go. There was a touch of genius in Archie, a flicker of what she called the _feu sacré_, and she had kept it burning before her own shrine. The fine unscrupulousness that was her main characteristic, her manner of breasting the tide of circumstance full sail, awed and charmed him. For all his boldness and initiative, his devil-may-care independence of will, and his originality in the conduct of his affairs, he had never freed his inner self from her thrall, and she held him by the strong impression she had made on his imagination years and years ago. She had set her mark upon the plastic character of the little boy whom she had beaten for painting Mr. Duthie's gate-post. That was an episode which he had never forgotten, which he always thought of with a smile; and while he remembered the sting of her cane, he also remembered her masterly routing of his enemy before she applied it. She had punished him with the thoroughness that was hers, but she had never allowed the minister to know what she had done. Technically she had been on the side of the angels, but in reality she had stood by the culprit. In spirit they had resented Mr. Duthie together.