“Hold there, my child! If you call any cost little, I will not hear a word more: we should be but running a race from different points to different goals! It will cost--that is enough! How much it will cost _me_, you can not calculate, for you do not know what money stands for in my eyes. There are things before which money is insignificant!” “Those dreary old books!” said Alexa to herself, casting a glance on the shelves that filled the room from floor to ceiling, and from wall to wall. “What I was going to say, father,” she returned, “was, that I have a little money of my own, and this affair shall cost you nothing. Leave me to contrive. Would you tell him his friends must pay his board, or take him away? It would be a nice anecdote in the annals of the Fordyces of Potlurg!” “At the same time, what more natural?” rejoined her father. “His friends must in any case be applied to! I learn from his pocket-book--” “Father!” “Content yourself, Alexa. I have a right to know whom I receive under my roof. Besides, have I not learned thereby that the youth is a sort of connection!” “You don't mean it, father?” “I do mean it. His mother and yours were first cousins.” “That is not a connection; it's a close kinship!” “Is it?” said the laird, dryly. “Anyhow,” pursued Alexa, “I give you my word you shall hear nothing more of the expense.” She bade her father good-night, and returning to the bedside of her patient, released Meg. CHAPTER VI. ABOUT THE LAIRD. Thomas Fordyce was a sucker from the root of a very old family tree, born in poverty, and, with great pinching of father and mother, brothers and sisters, educated for the Church. But from pleasure in scholarship, from archaeological tastes, a passion for the arcana of history, and a love of literature, strong, although not of the highest kind, he had settled down as a school-master, and in his calling had excelled. By all who knew him he was regarded as an accomplished, amiable, and worthy man. When his years were verging on the undefined close of middle age he saw the lives between him and the family property, one by one wither at the touch of death, until at last there was no one but himself and his daughter to succeed. He was at the time the head of a flourishing school in a large manufacturing town; and it was not without some regret, though with more pleasure, that he yielded his profession and retired to Potlurg.