Phineas Finn reached Loughlinter together with Mr Ratler in a post-chaise from the neighbouring town. Mr Ratler, who had done this kind of thing very often before, travelled without impediments, but the new servant of our hero’s was stuck outside with the driver, and was in the way. “I never bring a man with me,” said Mr Ratler to his young friend. “The servants of the house like it much better, because they get fee’d; you are just as well waited on, and it don’t cost half as much.” Phineas blushed as he heard all this; but there was the impediment, not to be got rid of for the nonce, and Phineas made the best of his attendant. “It’s one of those points,” said he, “as to which a man never quite makes up his mind. If you bring a fellow, you wish you hadn’t brought him; and if you don’t, you wish you had.” “I’m a great deal more decided in my ways that that,” said Mr Ratler.

Loughlinter, as they approached it, seemed to Phineas to be a much finer place than Saulsby. And so it was, except that Loughlinter wanted that graceful beauty of age which Saulsby possessed. Loughlinter was all of cut stone, but the stones had been cut only yesterday. It stood on a gentle slope, with a greensward falling from the front entrance down to a mountain lake. And on the other side of the Lough there rose a mighty mountain to the skies, Ben Linter. At the foot of it, and all round to the left, there ran the woods of Linter, stretching for miles through crags and bogs and mountain lands. No better ground for deer than the side of Ben Linter was there in all those highlands. And the Linter, rushing down into the Lough through rocks which, in some places, almost met together above its waters, ran so near to the house that the pleasant noise of its cataracts could be heard from the hall door. Behind the house the expanse of drained park land seemed to be interminable; and then, again, came the mountains. There were Ben Linn and Ben Lody — and the whole territory belonging to Mr Kennedy. He was laird of Linn and laird of Linter, as his people used to say. And yet his father had walked into Glasgow as a little boy — no doubt with the normal half-crown in his breeches pocket.

“Magnificent — is it not?” said Phineas to the Treasury Secretary, as they were being driven up to the door.

“Very grand — but the young trees show the new man. A new man may buy a forest; but he can’t get park trees.”

Phineas, at the moment, was thinking how far all these things which he saw, the mountains stretching everywhere around him, the castle, the lake, the river, the wealth of it all, and, more than the wealth, the nobility of the beauty, might act as temptations to Lady Laura Standish. If a woman were asked to have the half of all this, would it be possible that she should prefer to take the half of his nothing? He thought it might be possible for a girl who would confess, or seem to confess, that love should be everything. But it could hardly be possible for a woman who looked at the world almost as a man looked at it — as an oyster to be opened with such weapon as she could find ready to her hand. Lady Laura professed to have a care for all the affairs of the world. She loved politics, and could talk of social science, and had broad ideas about religion, and was devoted to certain educational views. Such a woman would feel that wealth was necessary to her, and would be willing, for the sake of wealth, to put up with a husband without romance. Nay; might it not be that she would prefer a husband without romance? Thus Phineas was arguing to himself as he was driven up to the door of Loughlinter Castle, while Mr Ratler was eloquent on the beauty of old park trees. “After all, a Scotch forest is a very scrubby sort of thing,” said Mr Ratler.

There was nobody in the house — at least, they found nobody; and within half an hour Phineas was walking about the grounds by himself. Mr Ratler had declared himself to be delighted at having an opportunity of writing letters — and no doubt was writing them by the dozen, all dated from Loughlinter, and all detailing the facts that Mr Gresham, and Mr Monk, and Plantagenet Palliser, and Lord Brentford were in the same house with him. Phineas had no letters to write, and therefore rushed down across the broad lawn to the river, of which he heard the noisy tumbling waters. There was something in the air which immediately filled him with high spirits; and, in his desire to investigate the glories of the place, he forgot that he was going to dine with four Cabinet Ministers in a row. He soon reached the stream, and began to make his way up it through the ravine. There was waterfall over waterfall, and there were little bridges here and there which looked to be half natural and half artificial, and a path which required that you should climb, but which was yet a path, and all was so arranged that not a pleasant splashing rush of the waters was lost to the visitor. He went on and on, up the stream, till there was a sharp turn in the ravine, and then, looking upwards, he saw above his head a man and a woman standing together on one of the little half-made wooden bridges. His eyes were sharp, and he saw at a glance that the woman was Lady Laura Standish. He had not recognised the man, but he had very little doubt that it was Mr Kennedy. Of course it was Mr Kennedy, because he would prefer that it should be any other man under the sun. He would have turned back at once if he had thought that he could have done so without being observed; but he felt sure that, standing as they were, they must have observed him. He did not like to join them. He would not intrude himself. So he remained still, and began to throw stones into the river. But he had not thrown above a stone or two when he was called from above. He looked up, and then he perceived that the man who called him was his host. Of course it was Mr Kennedy. Thereupon he ceased to throw stones, and went up the path, and joined them upon the bridge. Mr Kennedy stepped forward, and bade him welcome to Loughlinter. His manner was less cold, and he seemed to have more words at command than was usual with him. “You have not been long,” he said, in finding out the most beautiful spot about the place.”

“Is it not lovely?” said Laura, We have not been here an hour yet, and Mr Kennedy insisted on bringing me here,”

“It is wonderfully beautiful,” said Phineas.

“It is this very spot where we now stand that made me build the house where it is,” said Mr Kennedy, “and I was only eighteen when I stood here and made up my mind. That is just twenty-five years ago.” “So he is forty-three, said Phineas to himself, thinking how glorious it was to be only twenty-five. “And within twelve months,” continued Mr Kennedy, “the foundations were being dug and the stone-cutters were at work.”

“What a good-natured man your father must have been,” said Lady Laura.

“He had nothing else to do with his money but to pour it over my head, as it were. I don’t think he had any other enjoyment of it himself. Will you go a little higher, Lady Laura? We shall get a fine view over to Ben Linn just now.” Lady Laura declared that she would go as much higher as he chose to take her, and Phineas was rather in doubt as to what it would become him to do. He would stay where he was, or go down, or make himself to vanish after any most acceptable fashion; but if he were to do so abruptly it would seem as though he were attributing something special to the companionship of the other two. Mr Kennedy saw his doubt, and asked him to join them. “You may as well come on, Mr Finn. We don’t dine till eight, and it is not much past six yet. The men of business are all writing letters, and the ladies who have been travelling are in bed, I believe.”

“Not all of them, Mr Kennedy,” said Lady Laura. Then they went on with their walk very pleasantly, and the lord of all that they surveyed took them from one point of vantage to another, till they both swore that of all spots upon the earth Loughlinter was surely the most lovely. “I do delight in it, I own,” said the lord. “When I come up here alone, and feel that in the midst of this little bit of a crowded island I have all this to myself — all this with which no other man’s wealth can interfere — I grow proud of my own, till I become thoroughly ashamed of myself. After all, I believe it is better to dwell in cities than in the country — better, at any rate, for a rich man.” Mr Kennedy had now spoken more words than Phineas had heard to fall from his lips during the whole time that they had been acquainted with each other.

“I believe so too,” said Laura, if one were obliged to choose between the two. For myself, I think that a little of both is good for man and woman.”

“There is no doubt about that,” said Phineas.

“No doubt as far as enjoyment goes,” said Mr Kennedy.

He took them up out of the ravine on to the side of the mountain, and then down by another path through the woods to the back of the house. As they went he relapsed into his usual silence, and the conversation was kept up between the other two. At a point not very far from the castle — just so far that one could see by the break of the ground where the castle stood, Kennedy left them. “Mr Finn will take you back in safety, I am sure,” said he, “and, as I am here, I’ll go up to the farm for a moment. If I don’t show myself now and again when I am here, they think I’m indifferent about the “bestials”.”

“Now, Mr Kennedy,” said Lady Laura, you are going to pretend to understand all about sheep and oxen.” Mr Kennedy, owning that it was so, went away to his farm, and Phineas with Lady Laura returned towards the house. “I think, upon the whole,” said Lady Laura, “that that is as good a man as I know.”

“I should think he is an idle one,” said Phineas.

“I doubt that. He is, perhaps, neither zealous nor active. But he is thoughtful and high-principled, and has a method and a purpose in the use which he makes of his money. And you see that he has poetry in his nature too, if you get him upon the right string. How fond he is of the scenery of this place!”

“Any man would be fond of that. I’m ashamed to say that it almost makes me envy him. I certainly never have wished to be Mr Robert Kennedy in London, but I should like to be the Laird of Loughlinter.”

““Laird of Linn and Laird of Linter — Here in summer, gone in winter.” There is some ballad about the old lairds; but that belongs to a time when Mr Kennedy had not been heard of, when some branch of the Mackenzies lived down at that wretched old tower which you see as you first come upon the lake. When old Mr Kennedy bought it there were hardly a hundred acres on the property under cultivation.”

“And it belonged to the Mackenzies.”

“Yes — to the Mackenzie of Linn, as he was called. It was Mr Kennedy, the old man, who was first called Loughlinter. That is Linn Castle, and they lived there for hundreds of years. But these Highlanders, with all that is said of their family pride, have forgotten the Mackenzies already, and are quite proud of their rich landlord.”

“That is unpoetical,” said Phineas.

“Yes — but then poetry is so usually false. I doubt whether Scotland would not have been as prosaic a country as any under the sun but for Walter Scott — and I have no doubt that Henry V owes the romance of his character altogether to Shakespeare.”

“I sometimes think you despise poetry,” said Phineas.

“When it is false I do. The difficulty is to know when it is false and when it is true. Tom Moore was always false.”

“Not so false as Byron,” said Phineas with energy.

“Much more so, my friend. But we will not discuss that now. Have you seen Mr Monk since you have been here?”

“I have seen no one. I came with Mr Ratler.”

“Why with Mr Ratler? You cannot find Mr Ratler a companion much to your taste.”

“Chance brought us together. But Mr Ratler is a man of sense, Lady Laura, and is not to be despised.”

“It always seems to me,” said Lady Laura, that nothing is to be gained in politics by s............