But the gentle mother reminded him that Heaven, in afflicting them with lighter trials, had always spared them the one great trial that they never could be able to bear—namely, the loss of their children. Not one of the little ones had been taken from them. Each and all had fought valiantly and successfully through measles, whooping-cough, scarlet fever, and the rest; but whether _because_ of, or in _spite_ of the cheap quack medicines the impoverished parents poured down their throats, I cannot say. It was when they were expecting their seventh child that Clarence Everage, who had been hunted out by Alexander Lyon and the lawyers, was suddenly called from his obscurity to bear witness in the investigation of Mr. Lyon’s claim to the Barony of Killcrichtoun. It was but a link in the chain of evidence that he was to furnish. But any information he was expected to be able to give was as nothing compared to the tremendous revelation that was about to be made to himself. He, the poor usher, starving in a miserable third-floor back in Wellington street, Strand—heir presumptive to a barony!—the ancient Barony of Killcrichtoun! And but for this intrusive foreigner actually Baron of Killcrichtoun himself. For be it remembered that Clarence Everage knew nothing whatever of Alexander Lyon’s wife and child. The investigation, as you know, terminated in Alexander’s favor. And this witness and self-styled heir presumptive was liberally remunerated and sent home to his poor lodgings, pale wife and pining children, to brood over the vicissitudes of this life—to brood until he, whose temper had through all his trials been sweet, kind and cheerful, became soured and embittered and sorely tempted. What right, he asked himself, had this man—whose branch of the Killcrichtoun family had been self-expatriated for generations—to come over here and claim the ancient barony? He was not a Scotchman, nor even an Englishman, that should he hold it. And what good did it do him, after all? Beyond the mere title, the new baron cared little for the inheritance. He had not even visited Killcrichtoun. While to him the poor usher, what a god-send, what a treasure, what a paradise it might have been. This estate which was nothing to the wealthy Virginian, would have been everything to himself. _He_, had he possessed it, would have sold one-half the land to get funds to cultivate the other half. He would have pulled down the most ruinous parts of the castle to get materials to build up the better part of it. And he would have employed the starving tenants of the little hamlet in repairing his dwelling and tilling his ground, and a part of the wages he paid them would have come back to himself in the form of rents. He, the despised usher, oppressed by master and chafed by pupils, would then be lord of the manor, with servants, and tenantry dependent upon him.