Johnny was not much younger than Frank, but he was paternal to the others, having the airs and aims of a man, and having put, chiefly by necessity, but a little also by inclination, boyish things from him; he was as much in advance of Frank as he was of Rodie, who had not yet attained his twentieth year. The night was lovely, clear, and mild, and they made the round by the West Port very pleasantly together, and stood for a long time at the stairfoot of Johnny’s humble lodging, which was in one of the old-fashioned square two-storied houses at that end of the town, which still retained the picturesque distinction of an outside stair. It was not thought picturesque then, but only old-fashioned, and a mark of poverty, everybody’s ambition being to have a more modern and convenient house. The young men continued to discuss the matches past and present, and how Alick Seaton was off his game, and Bob Sinclair driving like fire, and the Beatons in force playing up to each other, so that they were awfully hard to beat in a foursome. Johnny took the interest of a born golfer in these particulars, though he himself played so little; and Frank, on ordinary occasions, had all the technicality of a neophyte, and outdid his more learned companions in all the terms of the game. But when they had left Johnny at his stairfoot, and, looking back, had seen the light of his candles leap into the darkness of the window, and wondered for a moment how he could sit down to work at this hour, they proceeded along the long line of the High Street for a minute or two in silence. Rodie was taller, stronger, and heavier than Frank, though so much younger, and had a little compassionate sympathy for the fellow, who, at his antiquated age, four-and-twenty, was still only a beginner at golf. The big youth was considering how to break down certain well considered advices for future play into terms adapted for the intellect of his elder, when Frank suddenly took the word, and began thus: “I say, Rodie! do you remember my old Uncle Anderson, and do you know anything about him? he must have been a queer old chap, if what my mother has been telling me is true about him.” “Ten to one----” said Rodie: but paused in time--he was about to say “ten to one it isn’t true”--for he heard of Mrs. Mowbray’s paint and powder (which at the worst was only powder), and knew her over-civility and affectations, and therefore concluded frankly, as became his age, that nothing about her could be true. But he remembered in time that this could not fitly be said to her son. “Ten to one it’s just stories,” Rodie said; “there’s stories about everybody; it is an awful town for stories, St. Rule’s.”