But one thing I do more than hope--I desire, if
    you will honour my wishes, that, come what may, you are to keep your
    British nationality, unless by special arrangement with and consent
    of the Privy Council. Such arrangement to be formally made by my
    friend, Edward Bingham Trent, or whomsoever he may appoint by deed or
    will to act in the matter, and made in such a way that no act save
    that alone of Parliament in all its estates, and endorsed by the
    King, may or can prevail against it. My last word to you is, Be bold and honest, and fear not. Most
    things--even kingship--_somewhere_ may now and again be won by the
    sword. A brave heart and a strong arm may go far. But whatever is
    so won cannot be held merely by the sword. Justice alone can hold in
    the long run. Where men trust they will follow, and the rank and
    file of people want to follow, not to lead. If it be your fortune to
    lead, be bold. Be wary, if you will; exercise any other faculties
    that may aid or guard. Shrink from nothing. Avoid nothing that is
    honourable in itself. Take responsibility when such presents itself. What others shrink from, accept. That is to be great in what world,
    little or big, you move. Fear nothing, no matter of what kind danger
    may be or whence it come. The only real way to meet danger is to
    despise it--except with your brains. Meet it in the gate, not the
    hall. My kinsman, the name of my race and your own, worthily mingled in
    your own person, now rests with you! _Letter from Rupert Sent Leger_, 32 _Bodmin Street_, _Victoria_, _S.W._,
_to Miss Janet MacKelpie_, _Croom_, _Ross-shire_. _January_ 3, 1907. MY DEAREST AUNT JANET,

    You will, I know, be rejoiced to hear of the great good-fortune which
    has come to me through the Will of Uncle Roger. Perhaps Sir Colin
    will have written to you, as he is one of the executors, and there is
    a bequest to you, so I must not spoil his pleasure of telling you of
    that part himself. Unfortunately, I am not free to speak fully of my
    own legacy yet, but I want you to know that at worst I am to receive
    an amount many times more than I ever dreamt of possessing through
    any possible stroke of fortune. So soon as I can leave
    London--where, of course, I must remain until things are settled--I
    am coming up to Croom to see you, and I hope I shall by then be able
    to let you know so much that you will be able to guess at the
    extraordinary change that has come to my circumstances. It is all
    like an impossible dream: there is nothing like it in the "Arabian
    Nights." However, the details must wait, I am pledged to secrecy for
    the present. And you must be pledged too. You won't mind, dear,
    will you? What I want to do at present is merely to tell you of my
    own good-fortune, and that I shall be going presently to live for a
    while at Vissarion. Won't you come with me, Aunt Janet? We shall
    talk more of this when I come to Croom; but I want you to keep the
    subject in your mind. Your loving
                                                                   RUPERT. _From Rupert Sent Leger's Journal_. _January_ 4, 1907. Things have been humming about me so fast that I have had hardly time
    to think. But some of the things have been so important, and have so
    changed my entire outlook on life, that it may be well to keep some
    personal record of them. I may some day want to remember some
    detail--perhaps the sequence of events, or something like that--and
    it may be useful. It ought to be, if there is any justice in things,
    for it will be an awful swot to write it when I have so many things
    to think of now. Aunt Janet, I suppose, will like to keep it locked
    up for me, as she does with all my journals and papers. That is one
    good thing about Aunt Janet amongst many: she has no curiosity, or
    else she has some other quality which keeps her from prying as other
    women would. It would seem that she has not so much as opened the
    cover of one of my journals ever in her life, and that she would not
    without my permission. So this can in time go to her also. I dined last night with Mr. Trent, by his special desire. The dinner
    was in his own rooms. Dinner sent in from the hotel. He would not
    have any waiters at all, but made them send in the dinner all at
    once, and we helped ourselves. As we were quite alone, we could talk
    freely, and we got over a lot of ground while we were dining. He
    began to tell me about Uncle Roger. I was glad of that, for, of
    course, I wanted to know all I could of him, and the fact was I had
    seen very little of him. Of course, when I was a small kid he was
    often in our house, for he was very fond of mother, and she of him. But I fancy that a small boy was rather a nuisance to him. And then
    I was at school, and he was away in the East. And then poor mother
    died while he was living in the Blue Mountains, and I never saw him
    again. When I wrote to him about Aunt Janet he answered me very
    kindly but he was so very just in the matter that I got afraid of
    him. And after that I ran away, and have been roaming ever since; so
    there was never a chance of our meeting. But that letter of his has
    opened my eyes. To think of him following me that way all over the
    world, waiting to hold out a helping hand if I should want it, I only
    wish I had known, or even suspected, the sort of man he was, and how
    he cared for me, and I would sometimes have come back to see him, if
    I had to come half round the world. Well, all I can do now is to
    carry out his wishes; that will be my expiation for my neglect. He
    knew what he wanted exactly, and I suppose I shall come in time to
    know it all and understand it, too. I was thinking something like this when Mr. Trent began to talk, so
    that all he said fitted exactly into my own thought. The two men
    were evidently great friends--I should have gathered that, anyhow,
    from the Will--and the letters--so I was not surprised when Mr. Trent
    told me that they had been to school together, Uncle Roger being a
    senior when he was a junior; and had then and ever after shared each
    other's confidence. Mr. Trent, I gathered, had from the very first
    been in love with my mother, even when she was a little girl; but he
    was poor and shy, and did not like to speak. When he had made up his
    mind to do so, he found that she had by then met my father, and could
    not help seeing that they loved each other. So he was silent. He
    told me he had never said a word about it to anyone--not even to my
    Uncle Roger, though he knew from one thing and another, though he
    never spoke of it, that he would like it.