Directly after that we both went back to India. We were anxious to go. Eve had died just before I sailed for South Africa; Diana had broken off her engagement with Eric and married Tom Birnie three years earlier. But I did not stay in India very long. I was restless for home again; and, having decided that the Regular Army could now get along without my services, I sent in my papers and settled in London. When Roy was nine years old his mother followed her sister. She had survived Eve only six years, for the same lung trouble had marked them down long ago. After that Eric felt that he could come back to Buckholm. So he came, and they gave him command of the Regimental Depot, with the rank of Major. The Depot is not far away from here, and he is able to join his mother at Buckholm for much of the time. He is quite his old self now, and he has made the Third Battalion a marvel of smartness and efficiency. But there is one house which he never visits—Baronrigg. I do not blame him. His memories there are not like mine. Moreover, besides hating Tom Birnie, he dislikes Roy. I am surprised at this, because the boy is the image of his mother. Still, I suppose a man may be forgiven for disliking a boy who should have been his own son, but is not. Anyhow, I know I shall not meet Eric during my stay at Baronrigg, so I have arranged to lunch at Buckholm after church to-day. That covers the congregation, I think. (Doctor Chirnside is working up to his peroration, and in a few minutes we shall be erect again.) I look over them once more. Altogether, a sturdy, satisfactory assemblage, from laird to ploughman. We have not changed much in the last two hundred years, nor will during the next two hundred, so far as I can see. We are Conservatives of Conservatives, although we return a Liberal. We shall go on tilling the fat soil, and raising fat cattle, and marrying young, and having big families, and sending a few of the boys into the Army, and a few to the Colonies, and keep the rest at home to marry strapping girls and have more big families, until the end of time. We are a little disturbed, to be sure, at the present state of the world outside. A street-bred Government, with both eyes on the industrial vote, has recently compelled us, even us, to disburse our hard-earned pennies upon stamps, to be stuck at frequent intervals upon an objectionable card. We are informed that this wasteful and uncongenial exercise is designed to bestow upon us the benefits of insurance against sickness—upon us, who are never either sick or sorry; and if ever we are, are taken care of (under an unwritten compact of immemorial antiquity) by the employers who have known us and ours for generations back. Other political upheavals are agitating the country, but they leave us cold in comparison with this superfluous imposition of benevolence.