CHAPTER V.


It was a delightful proof of the blessed elasticity of inconsistency in
human lives, a proof also that there was in these two men more of good
than of evil, that that same evening, when the lamp was lit, they
discussed the problem that had been mooted in the afternoon with a fair
amount of good temper. As they sat elbowing the deal table, sheets of
old newspapers under their inspection, Trenholme told his story more
soberly. He told it roughly, emphasising detail, slighting important
matter, as men tell stories who see them too near to get the just
proportion; but out of his words Bates had wit to glean the truth. It
seemed that his father had been a warmhearted man, with something
superior in his mental qualities and acquirements. Having made a
moderate fortune, he had liberally educated his sons. There is nothing
in which families differ more by nature than in the qualities of heart
which bind them together or easily release them from the bonds of
kinship. The members of this small family had that in them which held
them together in spite of the pulling of circumstance; for although the
elder son had come on the stage of manhood ten years before the younger,
although he had had talents that advanced him among scholarly men, and
had been quickly taken from his first curacy to fill a superior position
in a colony, he had never abated an affectionate correspondence with
Alec, and had remained the hero of his young brother's imagination. This
younger son, not having the same literary tastes, and having possibly a
softer heart, gratified his father by going into business with him; but
at that good man's death he had had sufficient enterprise, sufficient
distaste, possibly, for his English position, to sell the business that
was left in his hands, and affection drew him, as a loadstone a magnet,
to his brother's neighbourhood. He brought with him securities of the