“We will talk no more of it just now.”  And they walked up to Penalva Court, seriously enough.

“Well, Scoutbush, any letters from town?” said the Major.

“Yes.”

“You have heard what has happened at D——­ Barracks?”

“Yes.”

“You had better take care then, that the like of it does not happen here.”

“Here?”

“Yes.  I’ll tell you all presently.  Have you heard from head-quarters?”

“Yes; all right,” said Scoutbush, who did not like to let out the truth before Valencia.

Campbell saw it and signed to him to speak out.

“A11 right?” asked Valencia.  “Then you are not going?”

“Ay, but I am!  Orders to join my regiment by the first of October, and to be shot as soon afterwards as is fitting for the honour of my country.  So, Miss Val, you must be quick in making good friends with the heir-at-law; or else you won’t get your bills paid any more.”

“Oh, dear, dear!” And Valencia began to cry bitterly.  It was her first real sorrow.

Strangely enough, Major Campbell, instead of trying to comfort her, took Scoutbush out with him, and left her alone with her tears.  He could not rest till he had opened the whole cholera question.

Scoutbush was honestly shocked.  Who would have dreamed it?  No one had ever told him that the cholera had really been there before.  What could he do?  Send for Thurnall?

Tom was sent for; and Scoutbush found, to his horror, that what little he could have ever done ought to have been done three months ago, with Lord Minchampstead’s improvements at Pentremochyn.

The little man walked up and down, and wrung his hands.  He cursed Tardrew for not telling him the truth; he cursed himself for letting the cottages go out of his power; he cursed A, B, and C, for taking the said cottages off his hands; he cursed up, he cursed down, he cursed all around, things which ought to have been cursed, and things which really ought not—­for half of the worst sanatory sinners, in this blessed age of ignorance, yclept of progress and science (how our grandchildren will laugh at the epithets!) are utterly unconscious and guiltless ones.

But cursing leaves him, as it leaves other men, very much where he had started.

To do him justice, he was in one thing a true nobleman, for he was above all pride; as are most men of rank, who know what their own rank means.  It is only the upstart, unaccustomed to his new eminence, who stands on his dignity, and “asserts his power.”

So Scoutbush begged humbly of Thurnall only to tell him what he could do.

“You might use your moral influence, my lord.”

“Moral influence?” in a tone which implied naively enough, “I’d better get a little morals myself before I talk of using the same.”

“Your position in the parish—­”

“My good sir!” quoth Scoutbush in his shrewd way; “do you not know yourself what these fine fellows who were ready yesterday to kiss the dust off my feet would say, if I asked leave to touch a single hair of their rights?—­’Tell you what, my lord; we pays you your rent, and you takes it.  You mind your business, and we’ll mind our’n.’  You forget that times are changed since my seventeenth progenitor was lord of life and limb over man and maid in Aberalva.”