Wherever he travelled he heard his father spoken of with honour and respect, as a just man and a just judge; and this oft-repeated experience caused him intense pleasure. He grew prouder than ever of his father's good name, and stronger than ever in his resolve to emulate him. It was during this temporary absence from home that he met and engaged Ned Chester for his valet. Ned's career in the Australias had been one of adventure, and it had made him a jack of all trades and master of none. He had been by turns a stone-breaker, an auctioneer, a splitter of wood, a storekeeper, a shepherd, many times a gold-digger, a newspaper runner, and Heaven knows what besides. Had he been ordinarily industrious, he would most certainly have verified his mother's prediction that he would one day achieve sudden fortune--saying nothing of honour; but his love of indolence was incurable. His slips 'twixt cup and lip were numerous. Having in a tipsy fit purchased a piece of land for a song at a government land sale, he found himself, by reason of his disinclination for work, compelled to dispose of it, and he sold it--a day too soon. Twenty-four hours after it passed from his hands, rich deposits of gold were discovered in its vicinity, and the allotment was worth thousands of pounds. He sunk a shaft on a gold-lead, and having obtained fifty ounces of gold, "went on the spree" till every shilling was spent. When he returned to his shaft he found it in possession of a party of miners, each of whom was making ten ounces a day out of it. He had by the mining laws forfeited all claim to it by his desertion. This run of misfortune, as he termed it, followed him all through his career, and he failed to see that he was in any way accountable for it. Truth compels the further admission that he made the acquaintance of the interior of some colonial prisons, and that in the entire record of his experiences there was little that redounded to his credit. Strange, however, to state that in the midst of the lawlessness that prevails in all new communities, tempting to excess those whose passions are difficult to control, Ned Chester's besetting sin of intemperance which threatened to cut short his life in the Old Country lessened instead of gained in strength. And almost as strange is the fact that, with some indefinite idea that he would one day be called upon to play a gentleman's part in life, he endeavoured to fit himself, by reading and in manners, for this shadowy framework; with so much success as to cause him occasionally to be sneered at by his equals as a "stuck-up swell," a species of abuse which afforded him infinite satisfaction. Undoubtedly, the tenderness with which he held in remembrance the beautiful child-Duchess of Rosemary Lane was the leading incentive to this partial reformation. Her face and pretty figure were constantly before him, and constituted the tenderest episode in his past life--the only tender one indeed, for any love he