Rumbold looked up quickly, and the dull glitter of his eye brightened into a glance of searching scrutiny as he fixed it on Lawrence. "An ungrateful race always, these Stuarts," he said with a shrug. "Nay, I say not that," rejoined Lee. "Your poor bedesman may know every scratch and mark upon his little scraped-up hoard; but can your rich trader tell you one from another of his coffered guineas? And king's friends are so. Countless as the grain I sow in my fields." "To be as soon scattered to the winds, and trod under foot," growled Rumbold. "Put not your trust in princes." "I'd as lief trust one," smiled Lawrence, who knew his Bible too, "as any other child of man." "You speak idly, as a parrot chatters," said Rumbold in displeased tones; "and, in truth, I have long taken you for a--" He paused with a jerk. The word on his lips was scarcely one calculated to win over the young man to his ideas, and he substituted the milder epithet of "featherbrain." "I thank you for your compliment, Master Rumbold," said Lawrence swelling a little, and glancing silently, but proudly, round on his neat barns and ricks, among which they chanced to be standing. "I flattered myself my brains were none so empty." "Psha!" returned Rumbold; "a man may be a Mr. Worldly Wise, and still a fool and a beggar touching the treasure that waxeth not old. Think you that the storing of barns and the breeding of fat oxen will bring a man peace at the last?" "It may help to it, I doubt," answered the young proprietor, "if it so be that that man uses bounteously the wealth his barns and his cattle bring him. Not hoarding it greedily, but sharing it with those who need it. Then heaven, I take it, is like to bless our store." The maltster wagged his head impatiently. [Sidenote: Lawrence speaks out.] "Though in sooth," went on Lawrence, "I require not you to remind me, Master Rumbold, that though a man bestow all his goods to feed the poor, and hath not real charity, he is sounding brass indeed; and Heaven, that seeks pure gold only, will have none of him. I know, of course, as well as you do, that a clear conscience--" "And what," interrupted Rumbold, wincing involuntarily as Lee uttered these last words, and gazing gloomily into the muddy duck-pool at his feet, "what may be your notion of that?" "Of a clear conscience?" lightly laughed Lawrence. "Why, first and last, at all events, that its owner never do his neighbour any wrong." [Sidenote: A wrangle.] "And who is my neighbour?" muttered Rumbold, as if speaking to himself, and still keeping his eye moodily fixed on the turgid water. "Answer me that, Lawrence Lee."