’Your prospects are not so very certain,’ said Kate, who could talk excellent English when she chose, and kept her broad Scotch for familiar or affectionate intercourse. ’An hour or two one way or the other is not likely to make much difference.’ ’I am beginning to think that myself,’ he said, rather gloomily. And then, with a touch of remorse for the depressing speech she had made, she tried to cheer him a little; and, in fact, insisted on his going on with them. She even quoted a couplet from his own song to him— _’An hour or twa ’twill do nae harm,_ _The dints a’ fortune to forget’;_ and she said that, after the long drive, he ought to have a famous appetite for supper, and that there would be a good story to tell about their being shot into a hawthorn hedge, supposing that the skipper and Laidlaw and Jaap came in in the evening. Nevertheless, all during the evening there was a certain restraint in her manner. Altogether gone was her profuse friendship and her pride in East Lothian, although she remained as hospitable as ever. Sometimes she regarded him sharply, as if trying to make out something. On his part, he thought she was probably a little tired after the fatigues of the day; perhaps, also, he preferred her quieter manner. Then again, when the ’drei Gesellen’ came in, there was a little less hilarity than usual; and, contrary to her wont, she did not press them to stay when they proposed to adjourn to the club. Ronald, who had been vaguely resolving not to go near that haunt for some time to come, found that that was the alternative to his returning to his solitary lodging and his books at a comparatively early hour of the evening. Doubtless he should have conquered his repugnance to this later course; but the temptation—after a long day of pleasure-making—to finish up the last hour or so in the society of these good fellows was great. He went to the Harmony Club, and was made more welcome than ever; and somehow, in the excitement of the moment, he was induced to sing another song, and there were more people than ever claiming his acquaintance, and challenging him to have ’another one.’ *CHAPTER XVI.* *THE DOWNWARD WAY.* With a fatal certainty he was going from bad to worse; and there was no one to warn him; and if any one had warned him, probably he would not have cared. Life had come to be for him a hopeless and useless thing. His own instinct had answered true, when the American was urging him to go and cast himself into the eager strife of the world, and press forward to the universal goal of wealth and ease and independence. ’I’d rather be "where the dun deer lie,"’ he had said. Kingsley’s poem had taken firm root in his mind, simply because it found natural soil there.