which were all which remained to him of the possessions of a race that had once been as great as the Hamilton, the Douglas, or the Græme, and of which an empty title alone was left him, as though to make his poverty and its decay more marked. These did not often weigh on him; he cared little for riches, or for what they brought; and in the adventure and the vigour of a stirring wandering life there were a richness of colouring and a fullness of sensation which, together with a certain simplicity of taste and habit that was natural to himself, prevented the pale hues and narrow lines of impoverished fortunes from having place or note. But now the Duke's words had recalled them; and he looked at the King's Rest with more of melancholy than his dauntless and virile nature often knew. There, over the lofty gateway, where the banner of a great feudal line had floated, the scarlet leaves of the Virginian parasite alone were given to the wind. In the moat, where on many a summer night the night-riders had thundered over the bridge to scour hill and dale with the Warden of the Marches, there were now but the hoot of the heron, the nests of the water-rat, and the thick growth of sedges and waterlilies. In the chambers where James IV. had feasted, and Mary Stuart rested, and Charles

Edward found his loyalest friends and saftest refuge, the blue sky shone through the open rafters, and the tattered tapestry trembled on the walls, and the fox and the bat made their coverts; the grand entrance, the massive bastions, the stately towers which had been there when the bold Border chieftains rode out to join the marching of the clans, had vanished like the glories of Alnaschar's dream, all that remained to tell their place a mound of lichen-covered ruin, with the feathery grasses waving in the breeze ;it was the funeral pile of a dead race.

And the last of their blood, the last of their title, stood looking at it in the light of the setting sun with a pang at his heart.

"Well! better so than built up with dishonoured gold! The power and the pomp are gone, but the name at least is stainless," thought Erceldoune, as he looked away from the dark and shattered ruins of his heritage, across the moorland, golden with its gorse, and towards the free and sunlit distance of the seas, stretching far and wide.

CHAPTER II.

HAVING BROKEN HIS BREAD.

"WHAT did you think of that man?" said Lord Polemore to Victor Vane that evening over his coffee in the drawing-rooms, out of the Duke's hearing.

"Think of him? think of him? Well!-I think he will die a violent death."

"Good gracious!" said the peer, with a little shiver. Why?"

"I never analyse!" laughed Victor, softly. “I think so, because I think so. He will get shot in a duel, perhaps, for saying some barbaric truth or other in the teeth of policy."

"Who is that you are prophesying for with such charmingly horrible romance?" asked a very pretty

woman.

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'Fellow we met on the moor," answered Pole

more.

"Queer fellow! Beggar, you know,-holes

in the carpets, rats in the rooms, and yet, on my honour, Venice goblets and Mexican gold! Absurd!"

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What! a beggar with holes in his coat and rats in his pockets with Venice glass and Mexican ingots!" cried the beautiful blonde, who had been listening languidly.

"No, no! Not that sort of beggar, you know,” interposed the peer. "Man that lives in a lot of ruins. Messenger fellow-lunched with him to-day. Wretched place; only fit for bats; no household, no cook, no anything; odious dungeon! And yet, on my word, if the fellow isn't ridiculous enough to serve up his dry bread on gold salvers, and pour his small beer into Cinque Cento glasses!"

"Come! we had very fair wine considering it was a Barmecide's feast," laughed Vane.

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"Height of absurdity, you know!" went on Polemore, waxing almost eloquent under the spurs of the twinges of envy he had felt while at luncheon. 'Fancy, Lady Augusta! here's a man nothing but a courier, he says himself, always racing up and down Europe with bags; so hard up that he has to shoot for himself everything that he eats, and living in a wretched rat-hole I wouldn't turn a dog into; yet keeps gold and silver things fit for a prince, and

tells you bombastical stories about his ancestors having been caciques of Mexico! For my part, I don't doubt he stole them all!"

"Bravo! Bravissimo!" laughed Victor Vane. "And what is much more, Lady Augusta, this Border savage wears deer-skins in the rough, lifts' cattle when the moon's dark, and has a fricassee of young children boiling in a cauldron.

l'antique, you see!"

Quite â

"But who is the creature?" asked the lady, a little bewildered, a little interested, and a good deal amused.

"Oh-let me see-ah! he calls himself Fulke Erceldoune," said Polemore, with an air of never having heard the title, and of having strong reasons for believing it a false one.

A man standing near, turned at the name.

"Fulke? You are talking of Fulke Erceldoune ? Best fellow in the world, and has the handsomest strain of black-tan Gordon setters, bred on the Regent and Rake cross, going anywhere."

"Oh-ah-do you know him, then?" murmured Polemore, a little discomfited.

"Rather! First steeple-chaser in the two countries; tremendous pots always on him. Know him!-ask the Shire men. Saved my life, by the