Randolph Hay paused before he replied. He was more pained than pleased. Yet he appreciated the lawyer’s good intentions, and was grateful for them. At length he answered: “I thank you from my heart, Mr. Walling, for your intended kindness; and I feel grieved that I cannot accept your gracious proposal, since not to do so must seem so very ungracious as well as ungrateful to a friend whom I love and esteem as much as I do you. And yet I cannot accept it.” “But why not?” inquired the lawyer. “I—do not know. I cannot tell. I have a feeling against it which I am unable to define or analyze.” “But I am not. I know the cause of your reluctance. It is because it would not be strictly true. That is it. You need not answer, Ran, my boy. But you must allow me to tell you that you are a little too scrupulous for a practical world, though I do not like you the less on that account,” said Will Walling, with his usual little laugh. “And I hope my scruples, as you call them, will not affect our friendship?” “I have just told you that they will not. There, let the matter drop!” concluded the lawyer. Judy never heard of the offer Mr. Will Walling had made to adopt her as his daughter for the sake of giving her a good antenuptial position, nor did she ever guess that there would be any awkwardness in the record of her marriage in the Hay, of Haymore, item of “The Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland.” She was not troubled on that subject. All the affairs of the Hays were so satisfactorily settled now that the young couple were only waiting for the departure of Will Walling to leave Haymore for London, where they might live in retirement in that great city until they should have fitted themselves to mingle with the more critical of their Yorkshire neighbors. Early in the new year pleasant letters came from America. They were from Cleve and Palma Stuart, and brought news of the change of fortune that would take them to the mountain farm of West Virginia. Ran and Judy were pleased, yet puzzled. “I should have thought, if they left New York, they would have gone to that fine plantation in Mississippi,” said Judy. “So should I, and not to what must be a poor farm on the mountain,” added Ran. And then turning to Walling, he added: “You see you will have to take the documents, putting Palma in possession of the property I have made over to her, all the way to West Virginia.” “I will do that with pleasure. I have never yet seen the Alleghany Mountains,” replied Will Walling, who was always ready to travel over any new ground. It was nearly the first of February that Will Walling at length reluctantly made up his mind to take leave of his friends at Haymore. In bidding them farewell he said: “I cannot help regretting that you would not accept me for your father-in-law, Hay.” Ran only laughed in reply.