mental power in Jack’s grave young face, and he was a formidable opponent to his schoolfellows in contests of brain as well as of muscle.

Cheriton, except that his brows arched a little, so that he could not attain to the perfection of the family frown, and that he was an inch or two shorter and much slighter, was so like Jack that when he was grave and silent his brighter colouring and the moustaches to which he had attained were, at first sight, the chief points of difference between them. But then Jack’s face to-day would be his face to-morrow, while Cheriton’s expression varied with almost every word he spoke, so that he was sometimes said to be the image of his father, sometimes to be the one Lester who was like nobody but himself; while, now and then old friends wondered how this handsome young man came to have such a look of the mother, who had been no beauty, but only a high-minded and cultivated woman. He was his father’s favourite, and somehow his brothers were not jealous of the preference. “Cherry,” as they called him, was the family oracle, though he risked his place now and then when his utterances were not in accordance with the prevailing sentiment.

Mr Lester’s expression was now dark enough to indicate annoyance of no common kind; but it did not take much to make him look cross, and if his sons and daughter had not known that there was an unusual speck on the family horizon, they would have surmised that the keepers were in disgrace, the newspaper late in arriving, or that they themselves had unwittingly transgressed.

As it was they were all silent, though Cheriton looked up with a question in his eyes, and the twins glanced at each other.

“I have had a letter from—your brother; he has started on his journey, and will be here in a day or two.”

No one spoke for a moment, and then Cheriton said,—

“Well, father, I shall be very glad to see him. It’s a good time for him to come, and I hope we shall be able to make it pleasant for him.”

“Pleasant for him,” growled Bob.

“It won’t be at all pleasant for us,” said his sister. “Fancy a foreign fellow interfering in all our concerns. And Granny says he’s sure to set us a bad example.”

“Ay,” said the father, “you lads needn’t be in too great a hurry to get up an intimacy.”

“There’s not much fear of that,” said Cheriton.

“Ah, my boy,” said Mr Lester, turning to him, “you take it very well; but it’s hard on you; no one knows better than I do.”

“As for me,” said Cheriton, with a shade of the characteristic family gruffness in his much pleasanter voice, “you know it has always been my wish that he should come, and why should we set ourselves against it?”

“He ought to have come sooner,” said Jack.

“That’s no affair of yours, Jack,” said his father sharply. “Don’t be so ready with your comments. He is coming now, and—and I’ll hear no more grumbling. I’m hanged if I know what we are all to make of him, though,” he muttered as he left the hall.

“He’d better not interfere with me,” said Bob. “I shall take no notice of him.”

“Poor fellow!” said Cheriton satirically. “I won’t kiss him, I declare,” cried his sister.

“Now you boys, and Nettie, look here,” said Cheriton seriously. “Alvar is our father’s son and our brother. He is the eldest, and has his rights. That’s the fact; and his having lived all his life in Spain doesn’t alter it. And if his coming is strange to us, what will it be for him? Isn’t it an awful shame to set our backs up before we see him? Is it his fault?” Cheriton’s influence in the family was considerable, and the younger ones had no answer to his arguments; but influence and arguments are weak compared to prejudice; and no one answered till Jack grumbled out,—

“Of course we must do our duty by him, and perhaps he’ll improve.”

“On acquaintance,” suggested Cheriton, with half-suppressed fun. “Suppose he’s a finer fellow than any of us, and a better sort altogether. What shall we do then?”

“Oh, but he’s a foreigner, you know,” said Nettie, as if this settled the question. “Come, Bob, let’s go and see the puppies fed.”

“What I say is,” said Jack, as the twins went away and left their elders to a freer discussion, “that the thing has been left too late. Here is Alvar,—twenty-five, isn’t he?”

“Yes; he is only two years older than I am.”

“How can he turn into an Englishman? It’s all very well for you to chaff about it, and lecture the young ones; but the squire won’t stand him with patience for a day; there’ll be one continual row. Everything will be turned topsy-turvy. He’ll go back to Seville in a month.”

Cheriton was silent. He was older than Jack by nearly four years, and perhaps should not have attributed so much importance to the grumbling of his juniors; but his wider out-look only enabled him to see that their feelings were one-sided, it did not prevent him from sharing them; and the gift of a more sympathetic nature did but make him more conscious of how far these feelings were justifiable. Home life at Oakby had its difficulties, its roughnesses, and its daily trials; but what did this signify to the careless boys who had no dignity to lose, and by whom a harsh word from their father, or a rough one from each other, was forgotten and repeated twenty times a day? He himself had hardly grown into that independent existence which would make an unkindness from a brother an insult, an injustice from a father a thing to be resented beyond the day. It was still all among themselves, they knew each other, and suited each other, and stood up for each other against the world. They were still the children of their father’s house, and that tie was much too close and real for surface quarrels and disputes to slacken it. But this stranger, who must be the very first among them all, yet who did not know them, and whom they did not know, who had a right to this same identity of interest, and yet who would assuredly neither feel nor win it!

Jack accused his father of having acted unjustly to them all; the younger ones rebelled with a blind prejudice which they did not themselves understand. Cheriton was vividly conscious of the stranger’s rights, yet shrank from all they claimed from him; to the father he recalled resentment, weakness of purpose, and a youthful impulse, from the consequences of which he could not escape. The grandmother upstairs, no inconsiderable power in the Oakby household, formulated the vague distaste of her descendants, and strongly expressed her belief that a foreign heir would grieve his father, corrupt his brothers, and ruin his inheritance.

And now who was this foreign heir, this unknown brother, and what was the explanation of his existence?