resumed the laird, "he will walk away, and we shall see not a plack of
the money he carries with him. The visible will become the invisible,
the present the absent!"

"The little it will cost you, father--"

"Hold there, my child! If you call any cost little, I will not hear a
word more: we should be but running a race from different points to
different goals! It will cost--that is enough! How much it will cost
_me_, you can not calculate, for you do not know what money stands for
in my eyes. There are things before which money is insignificant!"

"Those dreary old books!" said Alexa to herself, casting a glance on the
shelves that filled the room from floor to ceiling, and from wall to
wall.

"What I was going to say, father," she returned, "was, that I have a
little money of my own, and this affair shall cost you nothing. Leave me
to contrive. Would you tell him his friends must pay his board, or take
him away? It would be a nice anecdote in the annals of the Fordyces of
Potlurg!"

"At the same time, what more natural?" rejoined her father. "His friends
must in any case be applied to! I learn from his pocket-book--"

"Father!"

"Content yourself, Alexa. I have a right to know whom I receive under my
roof. Besides, have I not learned thereby that the youth is a sort of
connection!"