Fool I'll be, but rogue I won't!" Mark strode on in silence, frightfully red in the face for full five minutes.

Then he turned sharply on Tom, and catching him by the shoulder, thrust him from him.
"There,--go! and don't let me see or hear of you; that is, till I tell you! Go along, I say! Hum-hum!" (in a tone half of wrath, and half of triumph), "his father's child! If you will ruin yourself, I can't help it." "Nor I, sir," said Tom, in a really piteous tone, bemoaning the day he ever saw Aberalva, as he watched Mark stride into his own gate.

"If I had but had common luck! If I had but brought my L1500 safe home here, and never seen Grace, and married this girl out of hand! Common luck is all I ask, and I never get it!" And Tom went home sulkier than a bear: but he did not let his father find out his trouble.

It was his last evening with the old man.
To-morrow he must go to London, and then--to scramble and twist about the world again till he died! "Well, why not?
A man must die somehow: but it's hard on the poor old father," said Tom.
As Tom was packing his scanty carpet-bag next morning, there was a knock at the door.

He looked out, and saw Armsworth's clerk.