The Colonel walked a mile along the stream without perceiving anybody, but at length he saw Philip Stanburne, very much occupied with his fly-book, and accompanied only by a dog, which began to bark vigorously as soon as he perceived the presence of a stranger. A quarter of an hour afterwards the two new acquaintances were talking easily enough, and the recluse of the Tower began to feel inclined to join the militia, though he had asked for time to consider. "I have heard," said the Colonel, "that the name which your house still keeps, and from which our own name comes, is due to some stone in your stream--stone in the burn, or stane i' th' burn, and so to Stanithburn and Stanburne. Is there any particular stone here likely to give a ground for the theory, or is it only a tradition?" "I have no doubt," said Philip Stanburne, "of the accuracy of tradition in this instance. Come and look at the stone itself." He turned aside from the direct path to the Tower, and they came again to the brink of the stream, which had here worn for itself two channels deep in the limestone. Between these channels rose an islanded rock about thirty feet above the present level of the water. A fragment of ruined building was discernible on its narrow summit. As the two men looked together on the stone from which their race had taken its name centuries ago, both fell under the influence of that mysterious sentiment, so different from the pride of station or the vanity of precedence, which binds us to the past. Neither of them spoke, but it is not an exaggeration to say that both felt their relationship then. Had not the time been when Stanburne of the Peel and Stanburne of Wenderholme were brothers? A fraternal feeling began to unite these two by subtle, invisible threads. CHAPTER XIV. AT SOOTYTHORN. Not many days after the little events narrated in the preceding chapter, Mr. Philip Stanburne awoke in a small bedroom on the second floor of the Thorn Inn, or Thorn Hotel, at Sootythorn. It was a disagreeable, stuffy little room; and an extensive four-poster covered fully one-half the area of the floor. There was the usual wash-hand stand, and close to the wash-hand stand a chair, and on the chair the undress uniform of a militia officer. Philip Stanburne lay in the extensive four-poster, and contemplated the military equipment, of which the most brilliant portions were the crimson sash, and the bright, newly gilded hilt of a handsome sword. As it was only the undress uniform, there was nothing particularly striking in the dress itself, which consisted of a plain dark-blue frock-coat, and black trowsers with narrow red seam. Nevertheless, Captain Stanburne felt no great inclination to invest his person with what looked very like a disguise. His instincts were by no means military; and the idea of marching through the streets of Sootythorn with a drawn sword in his hand had little attraction for him.