“I am afraid that is but too true, unless your head is better than mine. We are a sad set, we Wynnes. All the prosperity, and I fear much of the decency of the family, crossed the ocean long ago.” “Yet I should like to see Wyneote,” said I. “I think thou didst tell me it is not thy home.” “No; a soldier can hardly be said to have a home; and a younger brother, with a tough father alive, and an elder brother on an impoverished estate, must needs be a wanderer.” “But we shall make thee welcome here,” said my father, with grave kindness. “We are plain people, and live simply; but a Wynne should always find, as we used to say here, the latch-string outside.” With a little more talk of the Wynnes, the captain, declining to remain longer, rose, and, turning to me, said, “I hear, Cousin Hugh, that you refused to say that you were sorry for the sharp lesson you gave me the other night. I have made my peace with your mother.” “I shall see that my son behaves himself in future. Thou hast heard thy cousin, Hugh?” I had, and I meant to make it up with him, but my father’s effort as a peacemaker did not render my course the more easy. Still, with the mother-eyes on me, I kept my temper. “I was about to say thou hast done all a man can do,” said I. “Then let us shake hands honestly,” he replied, “and let bygones be bygones.” I saw both my parents glance at me. “I should be a brute if I did not say yes, and mean it, too; but I cannot declare that I am sorry, except for the whole business.” And with this I took his left hand, a variety of the commonplace ceremony which always, to my last knowledge of Captain Wynne, affected me unpleasantly. He laughed. “They call us hi Merionethshire the wilful Wynnes. You will find me a good friend if you don’t want the things I want, I am like most younger brothers, inclined to want things. I thank you all for a pleasant hour. It is like home, or better.” With this he bowed low to my mother’s curtsey, and went away, chatting as I conducted him to the door, and promising to sail with me, or to fish. Naturally enough, on my return I found my parents discussing our newly found relative. My mother thought he talked much of himself; and had been pleasanter if he had not spoken so frankly of his father. My father said little, except that there seemed to be good in the young man. “Why should we not forgive that in him which we must forgive in our own son?” My father had some dreadful power to hurt me, and to me only was he an unjust man; this may have been because my wrong-doing troubled both his paternal and his spiritual pride. I was about to say that there was little likeness between my sin and that of my cousin; but I saw my mother, as she stood a little back of my father’s great bulk, shake her head, and I held my tongue. Not so she. “If thou hadst been a woman in my place, John Wynne, thou wouldst be far from saying the thing thou hast said.”