Eddy himself was too much ashamed of the part he was playing to walk home with the young man who had thus come to his help. There was so much grace left in him that he could not do that. He made the excuse that he was going a little way up the loch to speak to Alick Chalmers, the universal agent, about something that was wanted for the decoration of the ball-room, and when Archie had left him he stood watching his progress over the hill till he was out of sight. He had been really touched by Archie’s kindness, and by the absolute trust that young Rowland had showed in him, and something of compunction, something of unwonted tenderness was in Eddy’s eyes as he looked after that good Samaritan. “What a good fellow he is,” he said to himself; “but Jove! how badly he carries himself. To think he should treat a man like that whom he knows so little as he knows me; but I ought to have gone with him, for he’ll be on his nose before he gets down to the road.” He could not but laugh at the manner in which Archie cannoned off a big boulder and nearly rolled down the hill at one point in his progress. His heart was still touched, but yet to be as awkward as that, was what no man had any right to be. Then he threw himself down on the heather again and thought, steadily following out with puckered eyebrows and a set face the scheme which had sprung to being in his brain when he set his eyes on the cheque which now kept him warm against his bosom. How much fun and frolic there was in that bit of paper, if he could have used it for his own pleasure. It gleamed across him that he might yet use it for his own pleasure and let everything slide; but there are some things that are more necessary than pleasure even to the most sordid mind. He had hailed this money as a benediction from heaven when it first dropped so unexpectedly into his hands, to enable him perhaps to arrange his most pressing affairs and deliver himself from a galling presence. But by the time Eddy rose from his seat among the heather, the most lively feeling he felt in his mind was resignation, and a sense that he was giving up his personal wishes in the noble way of paying an old debt, when he might have got so much fun out of the money! It was a wonderful change of view. He took his way to the upper end of the loch, but not to see Alick Chalmers. He went on for a mile or two on the crest of the hill, and then dropped down upon a little cluster of houses on a little knoll among the harvest fields where the scanty crop was only being gathered in in the end of October. Johnson came out of one of those houses as the young man approached. “If you’ve anything particular to say, let us go up the hill,” he said. “It aint safe talking in these little holes. They can hear you in the other room, if not next door.” “What makes you think I have anything to say?” “Well, there’s those invitations you promised me,” said Johnson.