I told him I had observed he did not enjoy good spirits; and that

it was a common fancy to envy others and think we should be the

better of some change; quoting Horace to the point, like a young

man fresh from college.

"Why, just so," said he. "And with that we may get back to our

accounts."

It was not long before I began to get wind of the causes that so

much depressed him. Indeed a blind man must have soon discovered

there was a shadow on that house, the shadow of the Master of

Ballantrae. Dead or alive (and he was then supposed to be dead)

that man was his brother's rival: his rival abroad, where there

was never a good word for Mr. Henry, and nothing but regret and

praise for the Master; and his rival at home, not only with his

father and his wife, but with the very servants.

They were two old serving-men that were the leaders. John Paul, a

little, bald, solemn, stomachy man, a great professor of piety and

(take him for all in all) a pretty faithful servant, was the chief

of the Master's faction. None durst go so far as John. He took a

pleasure in disregarding Mr. Henry publicly, often with a slighting

comparison. My lord and Mrs. Henry took him up, to be sure, but

never so resolutely as they should; and he had only to pull his

weeping face and begin his lamentations for the Master - "his

laddie," as he called him - to have the whole condoned. As for

Henry, he let these things pass in silence, sometimes with a sad

and sometimes with a black look. There was no rivalling the dead,

he knew that; and how to censure an old serving-man for a fault of

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