Jock said nothing, but he seemed to have grown mother-sick, spent all his leisure moments in haunting his mother’s steps, helping her in whatever she was about, and telling her everything about his studies and companions, as if she were the great solace of the life that had become so much less bright to him.

In general he showed himself as droll as ever, but there were days when, as John said, “all the skip was gone out of the Jack.”  The good Monk was puzzled by the change, which he did not think quite worthy of his cousin, having-—though the son of a military man-—a contempt for the pomp and circumstance of war.  He marvelled to see Jock affectionately hook up his sword over the photograph of Engelberg above his mantelshelf; and he hesitated to join the volunteers, as his aunt wished, by way of compelling variety and exercise.  Jock, however, decided on so doing, that Sydney might own at least that he was ready for a call to arms for his country.  He did not like to think that she was reading a report of Sir Philip Cameron’s campaign, in which the aide-de-camp happened to receive honourable mention for a dashing and hazardous ride.

“Why, old fellow, what makes you so down in the mouth?” said John, on that very day as the two cousins were walking home from a lecture.  They had had to get into a door-way to avoid the rush of rabble escorting a regiment of household troops on their way to the station, and Lucas had afterwards walked the length of two streets without a word.  “You don’t mean that you are hankering after all this style of thing-—row and all the rest of it.”

“There’s a good deal more going to it than row,” said Jock, rather heavily.

“What, that donkey, Evelyn, having cut you?  I should not trouble myself much on that score, though I did think better of him at Eton.”

“He hasn’t cut me,” Jock made sharp return.

“One pasteboard among all the family,” grunted the Friar.  “I reserve to myself the satisfaction of cutting him dead the next opportunity,” he added magniloquently.

Jock laughed, as he was of course intended to do, but there was such a painful ring in the laugh that John paused and said—-

“That’s not all, old fellow!  Come, make a clean breast of it, my fair son.  Thou dost weary of thy vocation.”

“No such thing,” exclaimed Jock, with an inaudible growl between his teeth.  “Trust Kencroft for boring on!” and aloud, with some impatience, “It is just what I would have chosen for its own sake.”

“Then,” said John, still keeping up the grand philosophical air and demeanour, though with real kindness and desire to show sympathy, “thou art either entangled by worldly scruples, leading thee to disdain the wholesome art of healing, or thou art, like thy brother, the victim of the fickle sex.”

“Shut up!” said Jock, pushed beyond endurance; “can’t you understand that some things can’t be talked of?”