"Well," said Brian at last, in a tone which showed deep disappointment, "I am sorry that you won't go so far, Hugo. I hope you will do well, however, without professions. Still, I should have been better satisfied to have your word for it--before I left Netherglen."

"Where are you going?" said Hugo, suddenly facing him.

"I don't quite know."

"To London?"

"No, Abroad."

"Abroad?" repeated Hugo, with a wondering accent. "Why should you go abroad?"

"That's my own business."

"But--but--" said the lad, flushing and paling, and stammering with eagerness, "I thought that you would stay here, and that Netherglen and everything would belong to you, and--and----"

"And that I should shoot, and fish, and ride, and disport myself gaily over my brother's inheritance--that my own hand deprived him of!" cried Brian, with angry bitterness. "It is so likely! Is it you who have no feeling, or do you fancy that I have none?"

"But the place is yours," faltered Hugo, with a guilty look, "Strathleckie is yours, if Netherglen is not."

"Mine! Yes, it is mine after a fashion," said Brian, while a hot, red flush crept up to his forehead, and his brows contracted painfully over his sad, dark eyes. "It is mine by law; mine by my father's will; and if it had come into my hands by any other way--if my brother had not died through my own carelessness--I suppose that I might have learnt to enjoy it like any other man. But as it is--I wish that every acre of it were at the bottom of the loch, and I there, too, for the matter of that! I have made up my mind that I will not benefit by Richard's death. Others may have the use of his wealth, but I am the last that should touch it.

I will have the two or three hundred a year that he used to give me, and I will have nothing more."

Hugo's face had grown pale. He looked more dismayed by this utterance than by anything that Brian as yet had said. He opened his lips once or twice before he could find his voice, and it was in curiously rough and broken tones that he at length asked a question.

"Is this because of what people say about--about you--and--Richard?"

He seemed to find it difficult to pronounce the dead man's name. Brian lifted up his face.

"What do people say about me and Richard, then?" he said.

Hugo retreated a little.

"If you don't know," he said, looking down miserably, "I can't tell you."

Brian's eyes blazed with sudden wrath.

"You have said too little or too much," he said. "I must know the rest.

What is it that people say?"

"Don't you know?"

"No, I do not know. Out with it."

"I can't tell you," said Hugo, biting his lips. "Don't ask me, ask someone else. Anyone."

"Is 'anyone' sure to know? I will hear it from you, and from no one else. What do people say?"

Hugo looked up at him and then down again. The struggle that was waging between the powers of good and evil in his soul had its effect even on his outer man. His very lips turned white as he considered what he should say.

Brian noted this change of colour, and was moved by it, thinking that he understood Hugo's reluctance to give him pain. He subdued his own impatience, and spoke in a lower, quieter voice.

"Don't take it to heart, Hugo, whatever it may be. It cannot be worse than the thing I have heard already--from my mother. I don't suppose I shall mind it much. They say, perhaps, that I--that I shot my brother"--(in spite of himself, Brian's voice trembled with passionate indignation)--"that I killed Richard purposely--knowing what I did--in order to possess myself of this miserable estate of his--is that what they say?"

Hugo answered by a bare little monosyllable--

"Yes."

"And who says this?"

"Everyone. The whole country side."

"Then--if this is believed so generally--why have no steps been taken to prove my guilt? Good God, my guilt! Why should I not be prosecuted at once for murder?"

"There would be no evidence, they say." Hugo murmured, uneasily. "It is simply a matter of assertion; you say you shot at a bird, not seeing him, and they say that you must have known that he was there. That is all."

"A matter of assertion! Well, they are right so far. If they don't believe my word, there is no more to be said," replied Brian, sadly, his excitement suddenly forsaking him. "Only I never thought that my word would even be asked for on such a subject by people who had known me all my life. You don't doubt me, do you, Hugo?"

"How could I?" said Hugo, in a voice so low and shaken that Brian could scarcely hear the words. But he felt instinctively that the lad's trust in him, on that one point, at least, had not wavered, and with a warm thrill of affection and gratitude he held out his hand. It gave him a rude shock to see that Hugo drew back and would not take it.

"What! you don't trust me after all?" he said, quickly.

"I--I do," cried Hugo, "but--what does it matter what I think? I'm not fit to take your hand--I cannot--I cannot----"

His emotion was so genuine that Brian felt some surprise, and also some compunction for having distrusted him before.

"Dear Hugo," he said, gently, "I shall know you better now. We have always been friends; don't forget that we are friends still, although I may be on the other side of the world. I'm going to try and lose myself in some out-of-the-way place, and live where nobody will ever know my story, but I shall be rather glad to think sometimes that, at any rate, you understand what I felt about poor Richard--that you never once misjudged me--I won't forget it, Hugo, I assure you."

He pressed Hugo's still reluctant hand, and then made him sit down beside him upon the fallen tree.

"We must talk business now," he said, more cheerfully--though it was a sad kind of cheerfulness after all--"for we have not much time left. I hear the luncheon-bell already. Shall we finish our talk first? You don't care for luncheon? No more do I. Where had we got to? Only to the initial step--that I was going abroad. I have several other things to explain to you."

His eyes looked out into the distance as he spoke; his voice lost its forced cheerfulness, and became immeasurably grave and sad. Hugo listened with hidden face. He did not care to turn his gloomy brows and anxiously-twitching lips towards the speaker.

"I shall never come back to Scotland," said Brian, slowly. "To England I may come some day, but it will be after many years. My mother has the management of Strathleckie; as well as of Netherglen, which belongs to her. She will live here, and use the house and dispose of the revenues as she pleases. Angela remains with her."

"But if you marry----"

"I shall never marry. My life is spoilt--ruined. I could not ask any woman to share it with me. I shall be a wanderer on the face of the earth--like Cain."

"No, no!" cried Hugo, passionately. "Not like Cain. There is no curse on you----"

"Not even my mother's curse? I am not sure," said Brian. "I shall be a wanderer, at any rate; so much is certain: living on my three hundred a year, very comfortably, no doubt; until this life is over, and I come out clear on the other side----"

Hugo lifted his face. "You don't mean," he whispered, with a look of terrified suspicion, "that you would ever lay hands on yourself, and shorten your life in that way?"

"Why, no. What makes you think that I should choose such a course? I hope I am not a coward," said Brian, simply. "No, I shall live out my days somewhere--somehow; but there is no harm in wishing that they were over."

There was a pause. The dreamy expression of Brian's eyes seemed to betoken that his thoughts were far away. Hugo moved his stick nervously through the grass at his feet. He could not look up.