The brotherly love between Jan and D’Arcy was a source of great comfort to her. Once only was it threatened with estrangement. It was when they had grown up into young men, and each believed that he was in love with Amabel. Jan had just prepared to sacrifice himself (and Amabel) with enthusiasm to his brother, when D’Arcy luckily discovered that he and the playmate of his childhood were not really suited to each other. It was the case. The conventionalities of English society in his own rank were part of D’Arcy’s very life, but to Amabel they had been made so distasteful in the hands of Lady Craikshaw that her energetic, straight-forward spirit was in continual revolt; and it was not the least of Jan’s merits in her eyes that his life had been what it was, that he was so different from the rest of the people amongst whom she lived, and that the interests and pleasures which they had in common were such as the world of fashion could neither give nor take away. Withheld from sacrificing his affections to his brother, Jan joined with his father to cut off the entail of his property. “D’Arcy is your heir, sir,” he said. “I hope to live well by my art, and GOD forbid that I should disinherit Lady Adelaide’s son.” His great gift did indeed bring fortune as well as fame to our hero. The Boys’ Home knows this. It has some generous patrons (it should have many!), and first amongst them must rank the great painter who sometimes presides at its annual festival, and is wont on such occasions pleasantly to speak of himself as “an old boy.” More accurately entitled to that character is the bow-legged man-servant of another artist,—Jan’s old master. These two live on together, and each would find it difficult to say whether pride and pleasure in the good luck of their old companion, or the never healed pain of his loss, is the stronger feeling in their kindly hearts. Amabel was her father’s heir, and in process of time Jan became the Squire, and went back to spend his life under the skies which inspired his childhood. But his wife is wont to say that she believes his true vocation was to be a miller, so strong is the love of windmills in him, and so proud is he of his Miller’s Thumb. At one time Mr. Ammaby wished him to take his name and arms, but Jan decided to keep his own. And it is by this name that Fame writes him in her roll of painters, and not by that of the old Squires of Ammaby, nor by the name he bore when he was a Child of the Windmill. CHAPTER XLII. CONCLUSION.