more wine? Oh, ay, Edith, of course! Well, go to her, sir, if you must;
but when you come to my age you'll have found out which wears the best
--woman or the bottle. I'll join you presently, and maybe we'll see
what can be done about this marrying business."

So David went to Edith, and they had a clear hour together before they
heard the colonel's slippered tread hobbling through the hall. Just
before he opened the door, David had said: "I sometimes doubt whether
you wholly love me, after all." And she had answered:

"If I do not, it is because I sometimes feel as if you were not your
real self."

The colonel heard nothing of this odd bit of dialogue; but when he had
subsided, with his usual grunt, into his arm-chair beside the fire-
place, and Edith had brought him his foot-stool and his pipe, and pat
the velvet skull cap on his bald pate, he drew a long whiff of tobacco
smoke, and said:

"If you young folks want to set up housekeeping a month from to-day,
you can do it, for all I care."

Little did any one of the three suspect what that month was destined to
bring forth.

David Poindexter's father had been married twice, his second wife dying
within a year of her wedding-day, and two weeks after bringing David
into the world. This lady, whose maiden name was Lambert, had a brother
who was a gentleman farmer, and a tolerably successful one. His farm
was situated in the parish of Witton, and he owned a handsome house on