style="font-size:15px;"> "I expect mother will have kept something for me," he said to himself, as he descended the slope. "I hope she is not worrying about what has become of me."
He looked right and left for his father, expecting to find him at work in the fields, but David was nowhere in evidence.
Ralph made a bee-line across the fields, and was soon in the shelter of the little homestead. He found his father and mother and his sister Ruth still seated at the breakfast-table. Ruth pushed back her chair at the sound of his footsteps and rose to her feet.
"Why, Ralph," she said, "where have you been? Mother's been quite worried about you."
"If that's all she has to worry her, she needn't worry much," he said, with a laugh. "But has anything happened? You all look desperately sober."
"We've heard some news that has made us all feel very anxious," David answered wearily. "We've sat here talking about it for the last half-hour."
"Then the news concerns us all?" Ralph questioned, with a catch in his voice.
"Very closely, my boy – very closely. The truth is, Julian Seccombe has got wounded out in Egypt."
"And he's the last life on the farm?" Ralph questioned, with a gasp.
"That is so, my boy. It seems strange that I should be so unfortunate in the choice of lives, and yet I could not have been more careful. Who could have thought that the parson's boy would become a soldier?"
"Life is always uncertain," Ralph answered, with a troubled look in his eyes, "whether a man is a soldier or a farmer."
"That is so," David answered reflectively. "Yet my father held his little place on only two lives, and one of them lived to be seventy-five."
"But, even then, I've heard you say the lease ran only a little over sixty years. It's a wicked gamble, is this leasehold system, with the chances in favour of the landlord."
"Why a gamble in favour of the landlord, my boy?" David questioned, lifting his mild eyes to his son's face.
"Why, because if all the 'lives' live out their threescore years and ten, the lease is still a short one; for you don't start with the first year of anyone's life."
"That is true," David answered sadly. "The parson's boy was ten, which I thought would be balanced by the other two."
"And the other two did not live ten years between them."
"Of course, nobody could foresee that," David answered sadly. "They were both healthy children. Our little Billy was three, and the healthiest baby of the lot."
"But with all the ailments of children in front of him?"
"Well, no. He had had whooping-cough, and got through it easily. It was the scarlet fever that carried him off. Poor little chap, he was gone in no time."
"And so, within a year, and after you had spent the greater part of your money, your farm hung upon two lives," Ralph said bitterly.
"But, humanly speaking, they were good lives. Not lives that would be exposed to much risk. Lawyer Doubleday told me that he intended to bring up his boy to the same profession, and Parson Seccombe told me he had dedicated Julian to the Church in his infancy. What better lives, humanly speaking, could you get? Neither parsons nor lawyers run any risks to speak of."
"Yes; that's true enough. The system being what it is, you did the best you could, no doubt."
"Nobody could foresee," David said sadly, "that Doubleday's boy would go and get drowned. I nearly fainted when I heard the news."
"And now you say that young Seccombe has got shot out in Egypt."
"I don't know as to his being shot; but Tom Dyer, who was here this morning, said that he had just seen the parson, who was in great trouble, news having reached him last evening that Julian was wounded."
"Then if the parson's in great trouble, the chances are he's badly wounded."
"I don't know. I thought of walking across to St. Goram directly, and seeing the parson for myself; but I'm almost afraid to do so, lest the worst should be true."
"We shall have to face it, whatever it is," Ralph said doggedly.
"But think of what it would mean to us if the parson's son should die! Poor mother is that troubled that she has not been able to eat a mouthful of breakfast!"
"She seems scarcely able to talk about it," Ralph said, glancing at the door through which his mother and Ruth had disappeared.
"She's a little bit disposed to look on the dark side of things generally," David said slowly. "For myself, I keep hoping for the best. It doesn't seem possible that God can strip us of everything at a blow."
"It doesn't seem to me as though God had any hand in the business," Ralph answered doggedly.
"Hush, Ralph, my boy! The issues of life and death are in His hands."
"And you believe also that He is the author of the leasehold system that obtains in this country?"
"I did not say that, Ralph; but He permits it."
"Just as He permits lying and theft, and murder and war, and all the other evil things there are in the world. But that is nothing to the point. You can't make me believe that the Almighty ever meant a few people to parcel out the world among themselves, and cheat all the rest out of their rights."
"The world is what it is, my boy, and neither you nor I can alter it."
"And you think it is our duty to submit quietly and uncomplainingly to whatever wrong or injustice is heaped upon us?"
"We must submit to the law, my boy, however hardly it presses upon us."
"But we ought to try, all the same, to get bad laws mended."
"You can't ladle the sea dry with a limpet-shell, Ralph, nor carry off a mountain in your pocket. No, no; let us not talk about the impossible, nor give up hope until we are forced to. Perhaps young Seccombe will recover."
"But if he should die, father. What would happen then?"
"I don't know, my boy, and I can't bear to think."
"But we'd better face the possibility," Ralph answered doggedly, "so that, if the worst should come to the worst, we may know just where we are."
"'Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,'" David answered, with a far-away look in his eyes. And he got up from his seat and walked slowly out of the house.
Ralph sat looking out of the window for several minutes, and then he went off in search of his mother and Ruth.
"Do you know, mother," he said, as cheerily as he could, "that I have had no breakfast yet? And, in spite of the bad news, I am too hungry for words."
"Had no breakfast?" she said, lifting up her hands in surprise. "I made sure you got something to eat before you went out."
"Well, then, you were wrong for once," he said, laughing. "Now, please put me out of my misery as quickly as possible."
"Ah, Ralph," she answered, with a sigh, "if we had no worse misery than hunger,
