Frank's debts were not in reality, large; and when he named the half of them--looking down in shame--the Squire, agreeably surprised, was about to express himself with a liberal heartiness that would have opened his son's excellent heart at once to him. But a warning look from Randal checked the impulse; and the Squire thought it right, as he had promised, to affect an anger he did not feel, and let fall the unlucky threat, "that it was all very well once in a way to exceed his allowance; but if Frank did not, in future, show more sense than to be led away by a set of London sharks and coxcombs, he must cut the army, come home, and take to farming." Frank imprudently exclaimed, "Oh, sir, I have no taste for farming. And after London, at my age, the country would be so horribly dull." "Aha!" said the Squire, very grimly--and he thrust back into his pocket-book some extra bank-notes which his fingers had itched to add to those he had already counted out. "The country is terribly dull, is it? Money goes there not upon follies and vices, but upon employing honest laborers, and increasing the wealth of the nation. It does not please you to spend money in that way: it is a pity you should ever be plagued with such duties." "My dear father--" "Hold your tongue, you puppy. Oh, I dare say, if you were in my shoes, you would cut down the oaks, and mortgage the property--sell it, for what I know--all go on a cast of the dice! Aha, sir--very well, very well--the country is horribly dull, is it? Pray, stay in town." "My dear Mr. Hazeldean," said Randal, blandly, and as if with the wish to turn off into a joke what threatened to be serious, "you must not interpret a hasty expression so literally. Why, you would make Frank as bad as Lord A----, who wrote word to his steward to cut down more timber; and when the steward replied, 'There are only three signposts left on the whole estate,' wrote back, '_They've_ done growing, at all events--'down with them.' You ought to know Lord A----, sir; so witty; and Frank's particular friend." "Your particular friend, Master Frank? Pretty friends!"--and the Squire buttoned up the pocket, to which he had transferred his note-book, with a determined air. "But I'm his friend, too," said Randal, kindly; "and I preach to him properly, I can tell you." Then, as if delicately anxious to change the subject, he began to ask questions upon crops, and the experiment of bone manure. He spoke earnestly, and with _gusto_, yet with the deference of one listening to a great practical authority. Randal had spent the afternoon in cramming the subject from agricultural journals and Parliamentary reports; and, like all practised readers, had really learned in a few hours more than many a man, unaccustomed to study, could gain from books in a year. The Squire was surprised and pleased at the young scholar's information and taste for such subjects.