“I like to see these notions in a young man, sir.  I had them myself at your age.  I believe I had great ideas then, on the subject of temptation and the force of circumstances; and was as Quixotic as any one about reforming rogues.  But my experience has convinced me that roguery is innate.  Nothing but outward force can control it, and keep it within bounds.  The terrors of the law must be that outward force.  I admire your kindness of heart; and in three-and-twenty we do not look for the wisdom and experience of forty or fifty.”

Frank was indignant at being set aside as an unripe youth.  He disapproved so strongly of all these measures, and of so much that was now going on at home under Mr. Henry’s influence that he determined to pay his long promised visit to Scotland; and Maggie, sad at heart to see how he was suffering, encouraged him in his determination.

CHAPTER VIII.

After he was gone, there came a November of the most dreary and characteristic kind.  There was incessant rain, and closing-in mists, without a gleam of sunshine to light up the drops of water, and make the wet stems and branches of the trees glisten.  Every color seemed dimmed and darkened; and the crisp autumnal glory of leaves fell soddened to the ground.  The latest flowers rotted away without ever coming to their bloom; and it looked as if the heavy monotonous sky had drawn closer and closer, and shut in the little moorland cottage as with a shroud.  In doors, things were no more cheerful.  Maggie saw that her mother was depressed, and she thought that Edward’s extravagance must be the occasion.  Oftentimes she wondered how far she might speak on the subject; and once or twice she drew near it in conversation; but her mother winced away, and Maggie could not as yet see any decided good to be gained from encountering such pain.  To herself it would have been a relief to have known the truth—­the worst, as far as her mother knew it; but she was not in the habit of thinking of herself.  She only tried, by long tender attention, to cheer and comfort her mother; and she and Nancy strove in every way to reduce the household expenditure, for there was little ready money to meet it.  Maggie wrote regularly to Edward; but since the note inquiring about the agency, she had never heard from him.  Whether her mother received letters she did not know; but at any rate she did not express anxiety, though her looks and manner betrayed that she was ill at ease.  It was almost a relief to Maggie when some change was given to her thoughts by Nancy’s becoming ill.  The damp gloomy weather brought on some kind of rheumatic attack, which obliged the old servant to keep her bed.  Formerly, in such an emergency, they would have engaged some cottager’s wife to come and do the house-work; but now it seemed tacitly understood that they could not afford it.  Even when Nancy grew worse, and required attendance in the night, Maggie still persisted