At length he looked up:--"My dear girl," he said, "how foolishly you talk, and how foolishly I, that have twenty things to do, stand here listening to you! All will go smooth on _my_ plan--if it should not, we have yours in reserve, and I swear to you I will adopt it. The trifle which this letter of yours enables me to command, may have luck in it, and we must not throw up the cards while we have a chance of the game.--Were I to cut from this moment, these few hundreds would make us little better or little worse--so you see we have two strings to our bow. Luck is sometimes against me, that is true--but upon true principle, and playing on the square, I can manage the best of them, or my name is not Mowbray. Adieu, my dearest Clara." So saying, he kissed her cheek with a more than usual degree of affection. Ere he could raise himself from his stooping posture, she threw her arm kindly over his neck, and said with a tone of the deepest interest, "My dearest brother, your slightest wish has been, and ever shall be, a law to me--Oh! if you would but grant me one request in return!" "What is it, you silly girl?" said Mowbray, gently disengaging himself from her hold.--"What is it you can have to ask that needs such a solemn preface?--Remember, I hate prefaces; and when I happen to open a book, always skip them." "Without preface, then, my dearest brother, will you, for my sake, avoid those quarrels in which the people yonder are eternally engaged? I never go down there but I hear of some new brawl; and I never lay my head down to sleep, but I dream that you are the victim of it. Even last night"---- "Nay, Clara, if you begin to tell your dreams, we shall never have done. Sleeping, to be sure, is the most serious employment of your life--for as to eating, you hardly match a sparrow; but I entreat you to sleep without dreaming, or to keep your visions to yourself.--Why do you keep such fast hold of me?--What on earth can you be afraid of?--Surely you do not think the blockhead Binks, or any other of the good folks below yonder, dared to turn on me? Egad, I wish they would pluck up a little mettle, that I might have an excuse for drilling them. Gad, I would soon teach them to follow at heel." "No, John," replied his sister; "it is not of such men as these that I have any fear--and yet, cowards are sometimes driven to desperation, and become more dangerous than better men--but it is not such as these that I fear. But there are men in the world whose qualities are beyond their seeming--whose spirit and courage lie hidden, like metals in the mine, under an unmarked or a plain exterior.--You may meet with such--you are rash and headlong, and apt to exercise your wit without always weighing consequences, and thus"----