“Not equal.  On, never in my whole life shall I be half so good as you!  But I’ll try hard to be as good as I can.  And I shall be always beside you.  Remember your promise.”

This was, that after he came of age, and ended his university career, instead of taking “the grand tour,” like most young heirs of the period, Cardross should settle down at home, in the character of of Lord Cairnforth’s private secretary—­always at hand, and ready in every possible way to lighten the burden of business which, even as a young man, the earl had found heavy enough, and as an old man he would be unable to bear.

“I shall never be clever, I know that,” pleaded the lad, who was learning a touching humility, “but I may be useful; and oh! if you would but use me, in any thing or every thing, I’d work day and night for you —­I would indeed!”

“I know you would, my son” (earl sometimes called him “my son” when they were by themselves), “and so you shall.”

That evening Lord Cairnforth dictated to Helen, by her boy’s hand, one of his rare letters, telling her that he and Cardross would return home in time for the latter’s birthday, which would be in a month from now, and which he wished kept with all the honors customary to the coming of age of an heir of Cairnforth.

“Heir of Cairnforth!” The lad started, and stopped writing.

“It must be so, my son; I wish it.  After your mother, you are my heir, and I shall honor you as such; afterward you will return here alone, and stay till the session is over; then come back, and live with me at the Castle, and fit yourself in every way to become—­what I can now wholly trust you to be—­the future master of Cairnforth.”

And so, as soon as the earl’s letter reached the peninsula, the rejoicings began.  The tenantry knew well enough who the earl had fixed upon to come after him, but his was his first public acknowledgment of the fact.  Helen’s position, as heiress presumptive, was regarded as merely nominal; it was her son, the fine young fellow whom every body knew from his babyhood, toward whom the loyalty of the little community blazed up in a height of feudal devotion that was touching to see.  The warm Scotch heart—­all the warmer, perhaps, for a certain narrowness and clannishness, which in its pride would probably, nay, certainly, have shut itself up against a stranger or an inferior—­opened freely to “Miss Helen’s” son and the minister’s grandson, a young man known to all and approved of by all.

So the festivity was planned to be just the earl’s coming of age over again, with the difference between June and December, which removed the feasting-place from the lawn to the great kitchen of the Castle, and caused bonfires on the hill-tops to be a very doubtful mode of jubilation.  The old folk—­young then—­who remembered the bright summer festival of twenty-four years ago told many a tale of that day, and how the “puir wee earl” came forward in his little chair and made his brief speech, every word and every promise of which his after life had so faithfully fulfilled.