the members ever after loved to tell) on the evening before his death.
Young Hay and young Pringle appeared again. There was another supper at
Windiclaws, another dinner at Driffel; and it resulted in Frank being
taken to the bosom of the county people as unreservedly as he had been
repudiated by the country folk. He occupied Hermiston after the manner
of an invader in a conquered capital. He was perpetually issuing from
it, as from a base, to toddy parties, fishing parties, and dinner
parties, to which Archie was not invited, or to which Archie would not
go. It was now that the name of The Recluse became general for the
young man. Some say that Innes invented it; Innes, at least, spread it
abroad.

"How's all with your Recluse to-day?" people would ask.

"O, reclusing away!" Innes would declare, with his bright air of saying
something witty; and immediately interrupt the general laughter which he
had provoked much more by his air than his words, "Mind you, it's all
very well laughing, but I'm not very well pleased. Poor Archie is a
good fellow, an excellent fellow, a fellow I always liked. I think it
small of him to take his little disgrace so hard, and shut himself up.
'Grant that it is a ridiculous story, painfully ridiculous,' I keep
telling him. 'Be a man! Live it down, man!' But not he. Of course,
it's just solitude, and shame, and all that. But I confess I'm
beginning to fear the result. It would be all the pities in the world
if a really promising fellow like Weir was to end ill. I'm seriously
tempted to write to Lord Hermiston, and put it plainly to him."

"I would if I were you," some of his auditors would say, shaking the
head, sitting bewildered and confused at this new view of the matter, so
deftly indicated by a single word. "A capital idea!" they would add,