must work; a few months' study will make me a tolerable artist.
Do not forget my mother, Valentine, and bid me 'Godspeed.'"

Her heart yearned for him--so young, so simple, so brave. She
longed to tell him how much she admired him--how she wanted to
help him, and would be his friend while she lived. But Miss
Charteris rarely yielded to any emotion; she had laid her hand in
his and said:

"Goodbye, Ronald--God bless you! Be brave; it is not one great
deed that makes a hero. The man who bears trouble well is the
greatest hero of all."

As he left his home in that quiet starlit night, Ronald little
thought that, while his mother lay weeping as though her heart
would break, a beautiful face, wet with bitter tears, watched him
from one of the upper windows, and his father, shut up alone,
listened to every sound, and heard the door closed behind his son
as he would have heard his own death knell.

The next day Lady Charteris and her daughter left Earlescourt.
Lord Earle gave no sign of the heavy blow which had struck him.
He was their attentive host while they remained; he escorted them
to their carriage, and parted from them with smiling words. Then
he went back to the house, where he was never more to hear the
sound of the voice he loved best on earth.

As the days and months passed, and the young heir did not return,
wonder and surprise reigned at Earlescourt. Lord Earle never
mentioned his son's name. People said he had gone abroad, and