turned the scales in her favour.  He was pleased to characterize the Hall as insupportable, and vowed that his clothes would be out of fashion before they reached Rousby Hall, their next stopping-place.  To do Philip justice, he was more honest a rascal than his father, though I am of the opinion that he had not the brain for great craft.  And he had drawn from his mother a love of baubles which kept his mind from scheming.  He had little to say to me, and I less to him.

Grafton, as may be supposed, made me distinct advances before his departure, perceiving the unwisdom of antagonizing me unnecessarily.  He had the imprudence once to ask of me the facts and figures of the estate; and tho’ ’twas skilfully done by contrasting his own crops in Kent, you may be sure I was on my guard, and that he got nothing.

I was near forgetting an incident of their visit which I afterwards had good cause to remember.  The morning of my talk with Mr. Allen I went to the stables to see how he had used Cynthia, and found old Harvey wiping her down, and rumbling the while like a crater.

“What think you of the rector as a representative of heaven, Harvey?” I asked.

“Him a representative of heaven!” he snorted; “I’ve heard tell of rotten boroughs, and I’m thinking Mr. Allen will be standing for one.  What be him and Mr. Grafton a-doing here, sir, plotting all kinds o’ crime while the old gentleman’s nigh on his back?”

“Plotting?” I said, catching at the word.

“Ay, plotting,” repeated Harvey, casting his cloth away; “murder and all the crimes in the calendar, I take it.  I hear him and Mr. Grafton among the stalls this morning, and when they sees me they look like Knipe, here, caught with a fowl.”

“And what were they saying?” I demanded.

“Saying!  God only knows their wickedness.  I got the words ’Upper Marlboro’ and ‘South River’ and ‘next voyage,’ and that profligate rector wanted to know as to how ‘Griggs was reliable.’”

I thought no more of it at the time, believing it to be some of the small rascalities they were forever at.  But that name of Griggs (why, the powers only know) stuck in my mind to turn up again.

CHAPTER X.

THE RED IN THE CARVEL BLOOD

After that, when we went back to Annapolis for the winter, there was no longer any disguise between my tutor and myself.  I was not of a mind to feign a situation that did not exist, nor to permit him to do so.  I gave him to understand that tho’ I went to him for instruction, ’twas through no fault of mine.  That I would learn what I pleased and do what pleased me.  And the rector, a curse upon him, seemed well content with that; nor could I come at his devil’s reason far wanting me, save for the money, as he had declared.  There were days when he and I never touched a hook, both being out of humour for study, when he told me yarns