His feelings became morbid again under that exercise. He imagined himself ill-used, despised, trampled upon, when the finer points of his compassionate and impulsive benevolence came into collision with the strong sense and energy of his partner, who in his turn grew impatient of the sentiment which he thought sickly, and the tenderness which he called weak. There was a rupture at last. A struggling man with dubious security came to Buchanan when Oswald was absent from Fendie. The sensitive man of feeling forgot prudence in compassion, and by his ill-judged acceptance of the uncertain “cautioner,” brought serious loss to the bank. Oswald returned; there were sharp and high words spoken by both, which neither, in less excited mood, would have given utterance to; and in a storm of bitter anger and wounded to the very heart, Walter Buchanan threw up his situation, dissolved his partnership with Oswald, and left the bank. Very soon to leave the world; for, before the winter was over, his course had ended. He could not bear such tempests of excitement, for pain to him was agony, and anger madness. So in his weakness he died, and left his gentle widow and his young daughter to fight with the world alone. Helen Buchanan was only sixteen. She had a fair proportion of what people call accomplishments, and might almost have been a governess in a boarding-school or a “gentleman’s family;” and beneath the accomplishments there was a sound substratum of education, and a mind matured too early for her own happiness. Fendie was abundantly supplied with _ladies’_ schools; so Helen, in her flush of youthful pride and independence, determined to offer her services to the humbler mothers, and to receive as her pupils not the young ladies, but the little girls of Fendie. Mrs Buchanan reluctantly acquiesced. She was a gentle, hopeful woman, accustomed to yield always to the quick impulses and keen feelings of her husband, and now rendering a kindred submission to her daughter. Helen was a very dutiful, very loving child, but her mother’s cheerful, patient nature was made to be thus influenced, and unconsciously and involuntarily the stronger spirit bore the mastery. So when the first pangs of their grief were over, Mrs Buchanan regretfully removed her substantial furniture from the dining-room of which she had been once so proud, and with many sighs saw her little maid-servant arrange in it the bare benches and large work-table which befitted its new character of school-room; and the youthful teacher began her labours. These had gone on successfully for four or five years before the pleasant April-tide on which Hope Oswald returned home; eventful years to Helen. It is not well to leave the unconscious happiness of girlhood too soon, even to enter upon the enchanted ground of youth. Toil, poverty, and William Oswald; the three together were well nigh too many for the youthful champion who had to struggle, single-handed, against them all.