“Turn it over fifty times, Master Smithies. We have no wish to force the farm upon you. Take a pinch of snuff, to help your sense of justice. Or if you would like a pipe, go and have it in my kitchen. And if you are hungry, cook will give you eggs and bacon.” “No, Sir; I am very much obliged to you. I never make much o' my thinking. I go by what the Lord sends right inside o' me, whenever I have decent folk to deal with. And spite of your cloth, Sir, you have a honest look.” “You deserve another pinch of snuff for that. Master Smithies, you have a gift of putting hard things softly. But this is not business. Is your mind made up?” “Yes, Sir. I will take the farm, at full rent, if the covenants are to my liking. They must be on both sides--both sides, mind you.” Mr. Jellicorse smiled as he began to read the draft prepared from a very ancient form which was firmly established on the Scargate Hall estates. The covenants, as usual, were all upon one side, the lessee being bound to a multitude of things, and the lessor to little more than acceptance of the rent. But such a result is in the nature of the case. Yet Jack o' the Smithies was not well content. In him true Yorkshire stubbornness was multiplied by the dogged tenacity of a British soldier, and the aggregate raised to an unknown power by the efforts of shrewd ignorance; and at last the lawyer took occasion to say, “Master John Smithies, you are worthy to serve under the colors of a Yordas.” “That I have, Sir, that I have,” cried the veteran, taken unawares, and shaking the stump of his arm in proof; “I have served under Sir Duncan Yordas, who will come home some day and claim his own; and he won't want no covenants of me.” “You can not have served under Duncan Yordas,” Mr. Jellicorse answered, with a smile of disbelief, craftily rousing the pugnacity of the man; “because he was not even in the army of the Company, or any other army. I mean, of course, unless there was some other Duncan Yordas.” “Tell me!” Jack o' Smithies almost shouted--“tell me about Duncan Yordas, indeed! Who he was, and what he wasn't! And what do lawyers know of such things? Why, you might have to command a regiment, and read covenants to them out there! Sir Duncan was not our colonel, nor our captain; but we was under his orders all the more; and well he knew how to give them. Not one in fifty of us was white; but he made us all as good as white men; and the enemy never saw the color of our backs. I wish I was out there again, I do, and would have staid, but for being hoarse of combat; though the fault was never in my throat, but in my arm.” “There is no fault in your throat, John Smithies, except that it is a great deal too loud. I am sorry for Sally, with a temper such as yours.” “That shows how much you know about it. I never lose my temper, without I hearken lies. And for you to go and say that I never saw Sir Duncan--”