“For me, of course,” he said, lightly. “Well! if there’s danger we’ll meet it. I like it, on the whole--it stirs a fellow’s blood. We were getting too comfortable, Bob, settling down, making ourselves too much at home. The next step would have been to be bored--eh? won’t say that process hadn’t begun.” “Sir,” said Mrs Ogilvy, “you will not say I have been inhospitable, or grudged you whatever I could give----” “Never, mother,” he said. “You’ve been as good as gold.” He had risen from his seat, and begun to walk about with an alert light step. The news had roused him; it had stirred his blood, as he said. “We must see about this exit of yours--subterraneous is it?--out of the Castle of Giant Despair--no, no, out of the good fairy’s castle, down into the wilds. You must show me this at once, Bob. If there’s a Yank on the trail there’s no time to be lost.” “There is perhaps no time to be lost--but not for him, only for you. My words are not kind, but my meaning is,” cried Mrs Ogilvy. “It is safest for you not to be with him, and for him not to be with you. Oh, do not wait here till you’re traced to the house, till ye have to run and break your neck down that terrible road, but go while everything is peaceable! Mr Lew, you shall have whatever money you want, and what clothes we can furnish, and--and my blessing--God’s blessing.” “Don’t you think,” he said, turning upon her, “you are undertaking a little too much? God’s blessing upon a fellow like me--that has committed every sin and repented of none, that have sent other sinners to their account, and wronged the orphan, and all that. God’s blessing----!” He was standing in the middle of the room, in which he was so inappropriate a figure, with his back to the end window, which was towards the west. It was now late in the afternoon, and the level rays pouring in made a broad bar across the carpet, and fell upon one side of his form, which partially intercepted its light and cut it with his tall outline. Mrs Ogilvy put her hands together with a cry. “What is that? What is it? Is it not just the blessed sun that He sends upon the just and the unjust--never stopping, whatever you have done--His sign held out to you that He has all His blessings in His hand, ready to give, more ready than me, that am a poor creature, no fit to judge? Oh, laddie--for you’re little more--see to Him holding out His hand!”