STAND FAST, CRAIG-ROYSTON! (VOLUME III)

CONTENTS OF VOL. III.

CHAPTER

1. In Vain—in Vain

2. Beyond Seas

3. West and East

4. Enlightenment

5. Marriage not a la Mode

6. A Split at Last

7. New Ways of Life

8. In a Northern Village

9. A Babble o' Green Fields: the End

STAND FAST, CRAIG-ROYSTON!

CHAPTER I.

IN VAIN—IN VAIN.

One evening Mr. Courtnay Fox, the London correspondent of the Edinburgh Chronicle, was as usual in his own room in the office in Fleet-street, when a card was brought to him.

"Show the gentleman up," said he to the boy.

A couple of seconds thereafter Vincent Harris made his appearance.

"Mr. Fox?" said he, inquiringly.

The heavy-built journalist did not rise to receive his visitor; he merely said—

"Take a chair. What can I do for you?"

"No, thanks," said Vincent, "I don't wish to detain you more than a moment. I only wanted to see if you could give me any information about Mr. George Bethune."

"Well, that would be only fair," said the big, ungainly man, with the small, keen blue eyes glinting behind spectacles; "that would be only a fair exchange, considering I remember how Mr. Bethune came down here one night and asked for information about you."

Vincent looked astonished.

"And I was able," continued Mr. Fox, "to give him all the information he cared for—namely, that you were the son of a very rich man. I presume that was all he wanted to know."

There was something in the tone of this speech—a familiarity bordering on insolence—that Vincent angrily resented; but he was wise enough to show nothing: his sole anxiety was to have news of Maisrie and her grandfather; this man's manner did not concern him much.

"I do not ask for information about Mr. Bethune himself; I dare say I know him as well as most do," said he with perfect calmness. "I only wish to know where he is."

"I don't know where he is," said the burly correspondent, examining the stranger with his small shrewd eyes, "but I guarantee that, wherever he is, he is living on the best. Shooting stags in Scotland most likely—"

"They don't shoot stags in December," said Vincent, briefly.

"Or careering down the Mediterranean in a yacht—gad, an auxiliary screw would come in handy for the old man," continued Mr. Fox, grinning at his own gay facetiousness; "anyhow, wherever he is, I'll bet he's enjoying himself and living on the fat of the land. Merry as a cricket—bawling away at his Scotch songs: I suppose that was how he amused himself when he was in Sing Sing—perhaps he learnt it there—"

"I thought you would probably know where he is," said Vincent, not paying much heed to these little jocosities, "if he happened to be sending in to you those articles on the Scotch ballads—"

"Articles on Scotch ballads!" said Mr. Fox, with a bit of a derisive laugh. "Yes, I know. A collation of the various versions: a cold collation, I should say, by the time he has got done with them. Why, my dear sir, have you never heard of Professor Childs, of Harvard College?"

"I have heard of Professor Child," said Vincent.

"Well, well, well, well, what is the difference?" said the ponderous correspondent, who rolled from side to side in his easy-chair as if he were in a bath, and peered with his minute, twinkling eyes. "And indeed it matters little to me what kind of rubbish is pitchforked into the Weekly. If my boss cares to do that kind of thing, for the sake of a 'brother Scot,' that's his own look-out. All I know is that not a scrap of the cold collation has come here, or has appeared in the Weekly as yet; so there is no clue that way to the whereabouts of old Father Christmas, old Santa Claus,