I have mentioned I was resolved to steal a march upon the Master; and this, with the complicity of Captain McMurtrie, was easily effected: a boat being partly loaded on the one side of our ship and the Master placed on board of it, the while a skiff put off from the other, carrying me alone. I had no more trouble in finding a direction to my lord’s house, whither I went at top speed, and which I found to be on the of the place, a very suitable , in a fine garden, with an extraordinary large barn, byre, and stable, all in one. It was here my lord was walking when I arrived; indeed, it had become his chief place of frequentation, and his mind was now filled with farming. I burst in upon him breathless, and gave him my news: which was indeed no news at all, several ships having outsailed the Nonesuch in the .  
“We have been expecting you long,” said my lord; “and indeed, of late days, ceased to expect you any more. I am glad to take your hand again, Mackellar. I thought you had been at the bottom of the sea.”
 
“Ah! my lord, would God I had!” cried I. “Things would have been better for yourself.”
 
“Not in the least,” says he, grimly. “I could not ask better. There is a long score to pay, and now—at last—I can begin to pay it.”
 
I cried out against his security.
 
“Oh!” says he, “this is not Durrisdeer, and I have taken my precautions. His reputation awaits him; I have prepared a welcome for my brother. Indeed, fortune has served me; for I found here a merchant of Albany who knew him after the ’45 and had mighty convenient suspicions of a murder: some one of the name of Chew it was, another Albanian. No one here will be surprised if I deny him my door; he will not be suffered to address my children, nor even to my wife: as for myself, I make so much exception for a brother that he may speak to me. I should lose my pleasure else,” says my lord, rubbing his palms.
 
Presently he bethought himself, and set men off running, with billets, to summon the magnates of the province. I cannot recall what he employed; at least, it was successful; and when our ancient enemy appeared upon the scene, he found my lord pacing in front of his house under some trees of shade, with the Governor upon one hand and various notables upon the other. My lady, who was seated in the verandah, rose with a very pinched expression and carried her children into the house.
 
The Master, well dressed and with an elegant walking-sword, bowed to the company in a handsome manner and nodded to my lord with familiarity. My lord did not accept the salutation, but looked upon his brother with bended brows.
 
“Well, sir,” says he, at last, “what ill wind brings you hither of all places, where (to our common disgrace) your reputation has preceded you?”
 
“Your lordship is pleased to be civil,” said the Master, with a fine start.
 
“I am pleased to be very plain,” returned my lord; “because it is needful you should clearly understand your situation. At home, where you were so little known, it was still possible to keep appearances; that would be quite vain in this province; and I have to tell you that I am quite resolved to wash my hands of you. You have already ruined me almost to the door, as you ruined my father before me;—whose heart you also broke. Your crimes escape the law; but my friend the Governor has promised protection to my family. Have a care, sir!” cries my lord, shaking his at him: “if you are observed to utter two words to any of my innocent household, the law shall be stretched to make you smart for it.”
 
“Ah!” says the Master, very slowly. “And so this is the advantage of a foreign land! These gentlemen are unacquainted with our story, I perceive. They do not know that I am the Lord Durrisdeer; they do not know you are my younger brother, sitting in my place under a sworn family compact; they do not know (or they would not be seen with you in familiar correspondence) that every acre is mine before God Almighty—and every doit of the money you from me, you do it as a thief, a , and a disloyal brother!”
 
“General Clinton,” I cried, “do not listen to his lies. I am the of the estate, and there is not one word of truth in it. The man is a rebel turned into a hired spy: there is his story in two words.”
 
It was thus that (in the heat of the moment) I let slip his .
 
“Fellow,” said the Governor, turning his face sternly on the Master, “I know more of you than you think for. We have some broken ends of your adventures in the provinces, which you will do very well not to drive me to investigate. There is the of Mr. Jacob Chew with all his merchandise; there is the matter of where you came from with so much money and jewels, when you were picked up by a Bermudan out of Albany. Believe me, if I let these matters lie, it is in for your family and out of respect for my valued friend, Lord Durrisdeer.”
 
There was a of applause from the .
 
“I should have remembered how a title would shine out in such a hole as this,” says the Master, white as a sheet: “no matter how unjustly come by. It for me, then, to die at my lord’s door, where my dead body will form a very cheerful .”
 
“Away with your affectations!” cries my lord. “You know very well I have no such meaning; only to protect myself from , and my home from your intrusion. I offer you a choice. Either I shall pay your passage home on the first ship, when you may perhaps be able to resume your occupations under Government, although God knows I would rather see you on the highway! Or, if that likes you not, stay here and welcome! I have inquired the least sum on which body and soul can be decently kept together in New York; so much you shall have, paid weekly; and if you cannot labour with your hands to better it, high time you should betake yourself to learn. The condition is—that you speak with no member of my family except myself,” he added.
 
I do not think I have ever seen any man so pale as was the Master; but he was and his mouth firm.
 
“I have been met here with some very unmerited insults,” said he, “from which I have certainly no idea to take refuge by flight. Give me your ; I take it without shame, for it is mine already—like the shirt upon your back; and I choose to stay until these gentlemen shall understand me better. Already they must spy the cloven , since with all your pretended eagerness for the family honour, you take a pleasure to degrade it in my person.”
 
“This is all very fine,” says my lord; “but to us who know you of old, you must be sure it signifies nothing. You take that alternative out of which you think that you can make the most. Take it, if you can, in silence; it will serve you better in the long run, you may believe me, than this of .”
 
“Oh, , my lord!” cries the Master, with a mounting and his very lifted up. “Be at rest: it will not fail you. It now remains that I should salute these gentlemen whom we have wearied with our family affairs.”
 
And he bowed to each in succession, settled his walking-sword, and took himself off, leaving every one amazed at his behaviour, and me not less so at my lord’s.
 
We were now to enter on a changed phase of this family division. The Master was by no manner of means so helpless as my lord supposed, having at his hand, and to his service, an excellent artist in all sorts of goldsmith work. With my lord’s allowance, which was not so as he had described it, the pair could support life; and all the of Secundra Dass might be laid upon one side for any future purpose. That this was done, I have no doubt. It was in all likelihood the Master’s design to gather a sufficiency, and then proceed in quest of that treasure which he had buried long before among the mountains; to which, if he had confined himself, he would have been more happily inspired. But unfortunately for himself and all of us, he took counsel of his anger. The public disgrace of his arrival—which I sometimes wonder he could manage to survive—rankled in his bones; he was in that humour when a man—in the words of the old adage—will cut off his nose to spite his face; and he must make himself a public spectacle in the hopes that some of the disgrace might spatter on my lord.
 
He chose, in a poor quarter of the town, a lonely, small house of boards, overhung with some acacias. It was furnished in front with a sort of hutch opening, like that of a dog’s , but about as high as a table from the ground, in which the poor man that built it had displayed some ; and it was this which took the Master’s fancy and possibly suggested his . It appears, on board the pirate ship he had acquired some quickness with the needle—enough, at least, to play the part of tailor in the public eye; which was all that was required by the nature of his . A placard was hung above the hutch, bearing these words in something of the following :
 
James Durie,
formerly MASTER of BALLANTRAE.
Clothes .
 
SECUNDRA DASS,
Decayed Gentleman of India.
Fine Goldsmith Work.
 
this, when he had a job, my gentleman sat withinside tailor-wise and busily stitching. I say, when he had a job; but such customers as came were rather for Secundra, and the Master’s sewing would be more in the manner of Penelope’s. He could never have designed to gain even butter to his bread by such a means of : enough for him that there was the name of Durie dragged in the dirt on the placard, and the sometime heir of that proud family set up cross-legged in public for a reproach upon his brother’s meanness. And in so far his device succeeded that there was murmuring in the town and a party formed highly inimical to my lord. My lord’s favour with the Governor laid him more open on the other side; my lady (who was never so well received in the colony) met with painful ; in a party of women, where it would be the topic most natural to introduce, she was almost debarred from the naming of needle-work; and I have seen her return with a flushed and that she would go abroad no more.
 
In the meanwhile my lord dwelled in his decent mansion, immersed in farming; a popular man with his intimates, and careless or unconscious of the rest. He laid on flesh; had a bright, busy face; even the heat seemed to with him; and my lady—in despite of her own annoyances—daily blessed Heaven her father should have left her such a paradise. She had looked on from a window upon the Master’s ; and from that hour appeared to feel at ease. I was not so sure myself; as time went on, there seemed to me a something not quite in my lord’s condition. Happy he was, beyond a doubt, but the grounds of this felicity were ; even in the of his family he brooded with manifest delight upon some private thought; and I conceived at last the suspicion (quite unworthy of us both) that he kept a mistress somewhere in the town. Yet he went little abroad, and his day was very occupied; indeed, there was but a single period, and that pretty early in the morning, while Mr. Alexander was at his lesson-book, of which I was not certain of the disposition. It should be borne in mind, in the defence of that which I now did, that I was always in some fear my lord was not quite justly in his reason; and with our enemy sitting so still in the same town with us, I did well to be upon my guard. Accordingly I made a pretext, had the hour changed at which I taught Mr. Alexander the foundation of cyphering and the mathematic, and set myself instead to dog my master’s footsteps.
 
Every morning, fair or , he took his gold-headed cane, set his hat on the back of his head—a recent habitude, which I thought to indicate a burning brow—and betook himself to make a certain circuit. At the first his way was among pleasant trees and beside a , where he would sit awhile, if the day were fine, in . Presently the path turned down to the waterside, and came back along the harbour-front and past the Master’s booth. As he approached this second part of his circuit, my Lord Durrisdeer began to pace more , like a man delighted with the air and scene; and before the booth, half-way between that and the water’s edge, would pause a little, leaning on his staff. It was the hour when the Master within upon his board and his needle. So these two brothers would gaze upon each other with hard faces; and then my lord move on again, smiling to himself.
 
It was but twice that I must stoop to that ungrateful necessity of playing spy. I was then certain of my lord’s purpose in his and of the secret source of his delight. Here was his mistress: it was and not love that gave him healthful colours. Some moralists might have been relieved by the discovery; I confess that I was dismayed. I found this situation of two brethren not only in itself, but big with possibilities of further evil; and I made it my practice, in so far as many occupations would allow, to go by a shorter path and be secretly present at their meeting. Coming down one day a little late, after I had been near a week prevented, I was struck with surprise to find a new development. I should say there was a bench against the Master’s house, where customers might sit to with the shopman; and here I found my lord seated, nursing his cane and looking pleasantly upon the bay. Not three feet from him sate the Master, stitching. Neither ; nor (in this new situation) did my lord so much as cut a glance upon his enemy. He tasted his neighbourhood, I must suppose, less in the bare of person; and, without doubt, drank deep of hateful pleasures.
 
He had no sooner come away than I openly joined him. “My lord, my lord,” said I, “this is no manner of behaviour.”
 
“I grow fat upon it,” he replied; and not merely the words, which were strange enough, but the whole character of his expression, shocked me.
 
“I warn you, my lord, against this indulgency of evil feeling,” said I. “I know not to which it is more , the soul or the reason; but you go the way to murder both.”
 
“You cannot understand,” said he. “You had never such mountains of bitterness upon your heart.”
 
“And if it were no more,” I added, “you will surely the man to some .”
 
“To the contrary; I am breaking his spirit,” says my lord.
 
Every morning for hard upon a week my lord took his same place upon the bench. It was a pleasant place, under the green acacias, with a sight upon the bay and , and a sound (from some way off) of marines singing at their employ. Here the two sate without speech or any external movement, beyond that of the needle or the Master biting off a thread, for he still clung to his of industry; and here I made a point to join them, wondering at myself and my companions. If any of my lord’s friends went by, he would hail them cheerfully, and cry out he was there to give some good advice to his brother, who was now (to his delight) grown quite . And even this the Master accepted with a steady countenance; what was in his mind, God knows, or perhaps Satan only.
 
All of a sudden, on a still day of what they call the Indian Summer, when the woods were changed into gold and pink and , the Master laid down his needle and burst into a fit of merriment. I think he must have been preparing it a long while in silence, for the note in itself was pretty naturally pitched; but breaking suddenly from so extreme a silence, and in circumstances so from mirth, it sounded on my ear.
 
“Henry,” said he, “I have for once made a false step, and for once you have had the wit to profit by it. The of the cobbler ends to-day; and I confess to you (with my compliments) that you have had the best of it. Blood will out; and you have certainly a choice idea of how to make yourself unpleasant.”
 
Never a word said my lord; it was just as though the Master had not broken silence.
 
“Come,” resumed the Master, “do not be sulky; it will spoil your attitude. You can now afford (believe me) to be a little gracious; for I have not merely a defeat to accept. I had meant to continue this performance till I had gathered enough money for a certain purpose; I confess , I have not the courage. You naturally desire my absence from this town; I have come round by another way to the same idea. And I have a proposition to make; or, if your lordship prefers, a favour to ask.”
 
“Ask it,” says my lord.
 
“You may have heard that I had once in this country a considerable treasure,” returned the Master; “it matters not whether or no—such is the fact; and I was obliged to bury it in a spot of which I have sufficient indications. To the recovery of this, has my ambition now come down; and, as it is my own, you will not it me.”
 
“Go and get it,” say............