“No,” he repeated, solemnly, “I can’t think it was right. I know you have no business to judge your own father. But I think,” said the lad, slowly, “I would almost rather he had done a wrong thing like that, than one of the good things. Mind, Elsie, he had a struggle with himself. He said it over and over and over, and rampaged about the room, as you do, when you cannot make up your mind. But he knew they could not pay, the poor bodies. He knew it would be worse for them than if they had never got the money. It was an awful temptation. Then, do you mind, he said: ‘the Lord commended the unjust steward.’ In his sermon he explained all that, but I cannot think he was explaining it the same way yon afternoon.” “Rodie,” said Elsie, with a little awe, “have you been thinking and thinking all this time, or when did you make out all that?” “Not I,” said the lad; “it just flashed out upon me when Frank was going on about his debtors, and about consulting my father. That’s what made me angry as much as anything. I don’t want papa to be disturbed in his mind, and made to think of that again. It was bad enough then. To be sure he will maybe refuse to speak at all, and that would be the best thing to do; and, considering what a long time has passed, he would be justified, in my opinion,” said Rodie, with great gravity; “but to sit down and write fourscore when it was a hundred--I would stand up for him to the last, and I would understand him,” cried the young man: “but I would rather my father did not do that.” “And of whom do you think he would be tempted to say that, Rodie?” said his sister, under her breath--Elsie had another thought very heavy at her heart. “Oh, of the Horsburghs, and the Aitkens, and so forth, and I am not sure but Johnny Wemyss’s folk would be in it,” said Rodie; “and they are all dead, and it would fall upon Johnny, and break his heart. I hope my father will refuse to speak at all.” Then there was a long silence, and they sat and gazed into the fire. Elsie’s idea was different. She knew some things which her brother did not know. But of these she would not breathe a word to him. They sat for some time quite silent, and there was a little stir over their heads, as if Mrs. Buchanan had risen from her chair, and was about to come down. “Rodie, you’ll have to be a W. S.,” cried Elsie, “and let Jack go to India; nobody but a lawyer could have put it all out as clear as that.” Rodie sprang to his feet, and struck out a powerful arm. “If you were not a lassie,” he cried furiously, “I would just knock you down.” When Mrs. Buchanan came into the room, this was what she saw against that wavering glow in the chimney; her son’s spring against an invisible foe, and Elsie demurely looking at him, with her work in her hands, from the other side of the fire.