hazards, at all costs, that must be got rid of. If there only had been that other nought, if only a _t_ had been prefixed to the _h_ of the hundred, and sundry other unimportant alterations made! It was impossible not to think of this, not to see how easy it would have been, had Mr. Rowland been possessed by so good an idea. What a pity! what a pity! Eddy with all his thinking could not imagine a plan by which Rowland could be made to do that: and yet how easy it would be! He threw the Glasgow paper over it when he heard the knock at the door. “Oh, is it you, Rowland? Come in. I was just looking at the--paper before I went to bed.” “Its little interest it can have for you--a Glasgow paper,” said Archie with a smile. And then he said, “I’ve come to speak about what we were saying this afternoon on the hill.” “Yes?” said Eddy. He has repented already, he said to himself with a deep drawn breath. Archie stammered and hesitated, and blushed as he sat down at the table. He began to rustle and pluck at the corner of the paper unconsciously with those awkward fingers which he never knew what to do with. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, and could get out no more. “Look here,” said Eddy nervously, “if you’ve been thinking, Rowland, as would be quite natural, that you were taken by surprise to-day on the hill, that you handed over that cheque to me in a moment of weakness, and that now on thinking it over you felt that you had been a fool, and that my troubles were no concern of yours--don’t beat about the bush. I have been thinking just the same myself. Its monstrous you should be put out about a fellow’s concerns whom you had never seen a month ago, and never may see again. Say it out, there’s a good fellow; don’t hesitate and spare my feelings. I agree beforehand in every word you say.” Archie stood open-mouthed while his companion delivered very rapidly this little oration, in which there was a great deal of genuine feeling: for Eddy thought it was almost inevitable that such a rash piece of generosity should be repented of, and yet was in so much mental excitement concerning the matter altogether, that his mind was full of impatient resentment against the man whose action (mentally) he approved, and whom he believed to be doing the most natural thing in the world. “I suppose,” said Archie, “it’s the natural thing, because a man is a little behind in his company manners, and all that, and can’t ride, or shoot, or dance, or anything as well as you; that you should make sure he is a cad all round, as you say.” “What do you mean?” cried Eddy, with his sharp eyes doing all he knew to read a face, to him altogether inscrutable in the simplicity of its single-mindedness.