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"Shall we light up again?" he asked.

Mr Mundy poured out a glass of water. "I think it is rather late," he replied, "but there are one or two things I wanted to hear about from you privately. Do you know anything of this school that Amelia is thinking of?" "It is a long way off," said Roland, "but it seems quite a good school: the headmaster was my brother's old tutor at Cambridge-a high wrangler as well as a scholar, so his ideas won't be one-sided.”

Mr Mundy drank, and stood looking reflectively at his glass.

"Roland," he asked suddenly, "what is the boy going in for -not the Church, really?"

"Oh! no," replied the other, "that is only her sentiment-it doesn't prevent her from being quite business-like. She wants him to have a try for the family fortune.'

"I never heard of it," said Mr Mundy. "Where does it come from?"

"It is land," replied Roland, "a big place in the south of England, belonging to the other Twymans. The present man is the last of them, and the property is entailed — at least we say so. He has a married daughter and some grandchildren, but the theory is that young Percy is the next male heir."

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'Legally?" repeated Mr Mundy. The word seemed to impress him. "Do you mind," he asked suddenly, "if we sit down again for a moment?— this is all new to me.' turned his chair to face the corner of the table where Roland was still sitting, sank into it, and began to fill a fresh pipe in silence.

"Do I understand," he began presently, "that this claim has been submitted to a lawyer? It seems so strange to me that I never heard your brother speak of it."

"He never spoke of it to any one it troubled him-he had scruples about it. As far as he himself was concerned, he renounced it but as it was a claim that he had inherited, he didn't think it right to decide against his successors. So he handed over all the papers to me many years ago, before he married, and it was then that I took a legal opinion."

"It was favourable, you say?"

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Well, it was not unfavourable, and Amelia is all for following it up. It is the only thing in which her husband's wish is not law to her; she thinks he was too unselfish to stand up against a usurper."

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"Well, it doesn't concern him till Sir William dies-he's a man of sixty-five, and quite hearty, I believe. Even then, a family lawsuit is not a career for a boy like Percy. I asked Amelia, when I gave her back the papers, not to talk to him about it at present."

"I think you are right there," said Mr Mundy; "it is a matter that may sleep: it has nothing to do with the question of his education-at least, not from my point of view."

"Nor from mine," added Roland; "the adventures you find in the law courts are not usually chivalrous ones."

The words turned Mr Mundy's thoughts back into their channel of half-an-hour ago. He began again in his sudden and confidential man

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"Roland, you haven't told me this. Why do you insist so much on a literary education? Where does Literature come in?"

"Everywhere," replied Roland. "Literature is the record of all the adventures that man ever had worth remembering. It is the only school of arms for

a boy's soul, and the only guide to the enchanted forest through which his way lies. He will go, of course, by a way of his own; he will come to castles and fords that he has never read of, but they won't be so different from those his ancestors found-the wooing and the tilting will be very like indeed, and then-" he hardly paused-"whatever else may change, the Sangraal does not."

Mr Mundy was silent, but his silences were not dumb ones; there was a breadth, almost a warmth about them, which made them more like twilight than darkness. Roland understood that his own last sentence was being received, not with intellectual assent, but with grave respect. He could not know that this was but partly for its own sake, and partly because he had once more vividly recalled the mood and manner of his dead brother; but he felt that in the sympathetic talk the edges of their controversy had softened. It was a pleasure to hear the quiet, kindly voice begin again

"Roland," said Mr Mundy, "you keep your point clear to the end. I like that; it makes a discussion more interesting. But mightn't we leave arguing now, and find some place of agreement before we go to bed? I mean, of course, on the theoretical question, because practically I imagine the boy will go to whatever school his mother sets her heart upon, and learn whatever they choose to teach him there. You think the most valuable part of that

will be what brings out his inherited character, especially the chivalrous and mystical tendencies of it. May I say that I still believe in another element as even more useful and necessary · the scientific spirit, the will to get clear of the mists of imagination and to look at the world in the broad daylight of fact and reason, to see things objectively as much as possible and subjectively as little as possible?" said

“My dear fellow,"

Roland cordially, "of course you must believe that, and why shouldn't you? All I ask is that Percy shall not be put into too strait a waistcoat.'

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"I think, perhaps, I was

hasty there," replied Mr Mundy. "I did my own cause an injustice. What I should have said is that my view of life

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the ancient and - modern view of life, is-well, not less old and true than the medieval view, and cannot give way to it, either in the progress of the race or of the individual. The boy will fall in with both, no fear of that: they will pull him both ways: you and I needn't trouble about the end, because we shall not live to see it."

"Good!" said Roland; "I like that way of putting it: it may very well happen as you say, and if it does, then that will be Percival's adventure."

(To be continued.)

AN INCIDENT BY THE WAY.

THOSE whose work takes them into the world's bypaths frequently find something in the little unexpected happenings on the march to compensate them for the discomforts of their journey. It is possible that the old-stagers in China who travel continually in carts, litters, or wheel-barrows which may be pulled, pushed, and sailed, may grow in time to find all journeys wearisome and all sensations dull; but for a fresh young spirit who has never been beyond reach of a railway, albeit an engineer, a trip into the wilds sparkles with the glamour of the unknown. The great, lonely space of the Northern Plain has a voice that can call, the passes have fingers that beckon. Cities may entice, but once outside their walls the little rugged path cries, "Follow me!"

The traveller in question had lived in China for a year, but he had been stuck in his own particular treaty - port, or else travelling up and down his especial section of line. Until a week ago he had thought that he knew all about China, because he could speak the language a little and saw the Chinese every day. He considered the country "monotonous," and the people "harmless," and his attitude towards them was one of good-humoured and indulgent patronage. But when he arrived in Peking he became aware that his ready

made ideas were undergoing a speedy and a lasting change. He entered the capital and was filled with astonishment; and then in turn with horror, laughter, and dismay. And the outcome of all these emotions and of the interest that they aroused was a wild love of unregenerate Peking, strong enough to upset all his treatyport convictions and to accompany him to the end of his days. No one is ever the same after a visit to Peking as before. Upon a short acquaintance Peking ceases to be a city and becomes one of the great elemental passions, like love or hate or fear. It is something that changes you, either for better or worse. What its influence will be you cannot tell you only know that things will never be quite the same again afterwards.

Richard Boyd was a tall, square-shouldered, clear-voiced man of twenty-four; a typical "foreign devil," blonde and blue-eyed. He was on his way to Kalgan in the interests of the Peking to Kalgan railway, and, as he climbed into his cart at the door of the inn-yard, he felt a little sorry to be off on a dull country journey when the city offered so many new experiences. And as they drove under the An-ting Mên, the carter sitting on the shaft and chirruping gaily to his two mules which were harnessed tandem with long rope-traces, Boyd stood up and leant his

arms on the top of the blue hood of the cart, and watched so regretfully the busy scene they were leaving that the picturesque Mongol village huddled outside the northern wall entirely failed to console him. The heavy wheels sank deep into the mud or jolted over stones. The cart swayed and rocked, Boyd swaying, rocking with it. Then he dived under the hood, and sat clutching the little wooden handles with which the sides were fitted, and held on until the mules gained the welcome grassy slopes that stretch at the foot of the hills.

The Nank'ow Pass thrilled him; at the sight of the Great Wall his heart beat a tattoo of admiration for this mighty work of the old-time hero. This was not the monotonous country that he thought he knew. He was aglow to see more of its highly civilised barbarity, and realised that though Peking with its laughter and its weeping and its fascinating sparkle lay behind him, there might be other things just as interesting before.

On that Monday he lunched at Nank'ow and slept at Ch'atow; on Tuesday he lunched at Huai-liai-hsien and slept at Sha-ch'ung; on Wednesday he ate macaroni and weak soup at a little village that seemed too small to have a name, and slept at Hsiang-shoei-p'oo; and on Thursday he rose up, still giddy from the rocking of the cart which had bumped its way placidly up and down a road composed of shallow steps, and felt pleased to think that

this was the last day of his journey, and that to-night he would sleep at Kalgan.

But the clear sky darkened as the morning wore on, and the wind began to blow in cold puffs, bringing the dust upon its wings. Boyd had been walking beside his cart for a couple of hours, and he climbed in and put on his dust - glasses. In this locality the road is merely the dry bed of a river, and as they turned round a bend and left the shelter of the rocks, a cold squall, driving the dust before it, came flying to meet them.

Cover his eyes as he would, the sand drifted into them. It crept down his neck and up his sleeves, and irritated him beyond words. Dustglasses were of little use; he bound his muffler round his eyes, but there were still cracks and crevices through which his enemy could find him. At last he sat with his rug tent wise over his head, and suffocated patiently beneath it.

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