"My dear Mr. Hazeldean," said Randal, blandly, and as if with the wish to
turn off into a joke what threatened to be serious, "you must not
interpret a hasty expression so literally. Why, you would make Frank as
bad as Lord A-----, who wrote word to his steward to cut down more
timber; and when the steward replied, 'There are only three sign-posts
left on the whole estate,' wrote back, 'They've done growing at all
events,--down with them!' You ought to know Lord A-----, sir; so witty;
and--Frank's particular friend."

"Your particular friend, Master Frank? Pretty friends!" and the squire
buttoned up the pocket to which he had transferred his note-book, with a
determined air.

"But I'm his friend, too," said Randal, kindly; "and I preach to him
properly, I can tell you." Then, as if delicately anxious to change the
subject, he began to ask questions upon crops and the experiment of bone
manure. He spoke earnestly, and with gusto, yet with the deference of
one listening to a great practical authority. Randal had spent the
afternoon in cramming the subject from agricultural journals and
parliamentary reports; and like all practised readers, had really learned
in a few hours more than many a man, unaccustomed to study, could gain
from books in a year. The squire was surprised and pleased at the young
scholar's information and taste for such subjects.

"But, to be sure," quoth he, with an angry look at poor Frank, "you have
good Hazeldean blood in you, and know a bean from a turnip."

"Why, sir," said Randal, ingenuously, "I am training myself for public
life; and what is a public man worth if be do not study the agriculture