“And made your fortune in three months?” inquired the Colonel.

“No, I didn’t; and don’t think trade is the thing for me.  I saw a deal of avarice and meanness, and a thief of a clerk got his master to suspect me of dishonesty; so I snapped my fingers at them all, and here I am.  But,” said the poor young fellow, “I do wish, father, you would put me into something where I can make a little money, so that when this estate comes to be sold, I may be the purchaser.”

Colonel Clifford started up in great emotion.

“Sell Clifford Hall, where I was born, and you were born, and everybody was born!  Those estates I sold were only outlying properties.”

“They were beautiful ones,” said Walter.  “I never see such peaches now.”

“As you did when you were six years old,” suggested the Colonel.  “No, nor you never will.  I’ve been six myself.  Lord knows when it was, though!”

“But, sir, I don’t see any such trout, and no such haunts for snipe.”

“Do you mean to insult me?” cried the Colonel, rather suddenly.  “This is what we are come to now.  Here’s a brat of six begins taking notes against his own father; and he improves on the Scotch poet—­he doesn’t print ’em.  No, he accumulates them cannily until he is twenty, but never says a word.  He loads his gun up to the muzzle, and waits, as the years roll on, with his linstock in his hand, and one fine day at breakfast he fires his treble charge of grape-shot at his own father.”

This was delivered so loudly that John feared a quarrel, and to interrupt it, put in his head, and said, mighty innocently: 

“Did you call, sir?  Can I do anything for you, sir?”

“Yes:  go to the devil!”

John went, but not down-stairs, as suggested—­a mere lateral movement that ended at the keyhole.

“Well, but, sir,” said Walter, half-reproachfully, “it was you elicited my views.”

“Confound your views, sir, and—­your impudence!  You’re in the right, and I am in the wrong” (this admission with a more ill-used tone than ever).  “It’s the race-horses.  Ring the bell.  What sawneys you young fellows are! it used not to take six minutes to ring a bell when I was your age.”

Walter, thus stimulated, sprang to the bell-rope, and pulled it all down to the ground with a single gesture.

The Colonel burst out laughing, and that did him good; and Mr. Baker answered the bell like lightning; he quite forgot that the bell must have rung fifty yards from the spot where he was enjoying the dialogue.

“Send me the steward, John; I saw him pass the window.”

Meantime the Colonel marched up and down with considerable agitation.  Walter, who had a filial heart, felt very uneasy, and said, timidly, “I am truly sorry, father, that I answered your questions so bluntly.”

“I’m not, then,” said the Colonel.  “I hold him to be less than a man who flies from the truth, whether it comes from young lips or old.  I have faced cavalry, sir, and I can face the truth.”