On the evening of his arrival, we all went out after dinner.  There had been a terrific gale which had destroyed half a wood on a hill in front of the library windows and we wanted to see the roots of the trees blown up by dynamite.  It was a moonlight night, but the moon is always brighter in novels than in life and it was pitch dark.  Alfred and I, walking arm in arm, talked gaily to each other as we stumbled over the broken brushwood by the side of the Quair burn.  As we approached the wood a white birch lay across the water at a slanting angle and I could not resist leaving Alfred’s side to walk across it.  It was, however, too slippery for me and I fell.  Alfred plunged into the burn and scrambled me out.  I landed on my feet and, except for sopping stockings, no harm was done.  Our party had scattered in the dark and, as it was past midnight, we walked back to the house alone.  When we returned, we found everybody had gone to their rooms and Alfred suggested carrying me up to bed.  As I weighed under eight stone, he lifted me up like a toy and deposited me on my bed.  Kneeling down, he kissed my hand and said good night to me.

Two days after this my brother Eddy and I travelled North for the Highland meeting.  Laura, who had been gradually recovering, was well enough to leave her room that day; and I need hardly say that this had the immediate effect of prolonging Alfred’s visit.

On my return to Glen ten days later she told me she had made up her mind to marry Alfred Lyttleton.

After what Mrs. Lyttelton has written of her husband, there is little to add, but I must say one word of my brother-in-law as he appeared to me in those early days.

Alfred Lyttelton was a vital, splendid young man of fervent nature, even more spoilt than we were.  He was as cool and as fundamentally unsusceptible as he was responsive and emotional.  Every one adored him; he combined the prowess at games of a Greek athlete with moral right-mindedness of a high order.  He was neither a gambler nor an artist.  He respected discipline, but loathed asceticism.

What interested me most in him was not his mind—­which lacked elasticity—­but his religion, his unquestioning obedience to the will of God and his perfect freedom from cant.  His mentality was brittle and he was as quick-tempered in argument as he was sunny and serene in games.  There are people who thought Alfred was a man of strong physical passions, wrestling with temptation till he had achieved complete self-mastery, but nothing was farther from the truth.  In him you found combined an ardent nature, a cool temperament and a peppery intellectual temper.  Alfred would have been justified in taking out a patent in himself as an Englishman, warranted like a dye never to lose colour.  To him most foreigners were frogs.  In Edward Lyttelton’s admirable monograph of his brother, you will read that one day, when Alfred was in the train, sucking an orange, “a