my views."

"Confound your views, sir, and--your impudence! You're in the right,
and I am in the wrong" (this admission with a more ill-used tone than
ever). "It's the race-horses. Ring the bell. What sawneys you young
fellows are! it used not to take six minutes to ring a bell when I was
your age."

Walter, thus stimulated, sprang to the bell-rope, and pulled it all down
to the ground with a single gesture.

The Colonel burst out laughing, and that did him good; and Mr. Baker
answered the bell like lightning; he quite forgot that the bell must have
rung fifty yards from the spot where he was enjoying the dialogue.

"Send me the steward, John; I saw him pass the window."

Meantime the Colonel marched up and down with considerable agitation.
Walter, who had a filial heart, felt very uneasy, and said, timidly, "I
am truly sorry, father, that I answered your questions so bluntly."

"I'm not, then," said the Colonel. "I hold him to be less than a man who
flies from the truth, whether it comes from young lips or old. I have
faced cavalry, sir, and I can face the truth."

At this moment the steward entered. "Jackson," said the Colonel, in the
very same tone he was speaking in, "put up my race-horses to auction by
public advertisement."

"But, sir, Jenny has got to run at Derby, and the brown colt at