upon their mother. So she waited, hoping and fearing, and working bravely while the weeks crept by. Grace and Lucy Heathcote wrote to her.

Lucy's letters were all about Grace. Grace was becoming more womanly; she thought she was paler than she used to be; she was more thoughtful; she seemed more religious.

Grace wrote about things in general. She did not disguise from Kate the hard battle she always had with her mother. The girls, indeed, had never been greatly influenced by Mrs. Heathcote-inferior as she was to her daughters in point of both education and feeling.

"Tell Frank,” she wrote, "that I have promised papa not to write to him. I told him, too, that I was going to send him messages. Tell him, dear Kate, that he is to go on loving me if he can, for I shall always love him. He is not to be worried if he does not succeed at first, because I can wait, and he is not to be impatient.

"My mother and I had a scene yesterday. Poor Lucy only cried. It was about Cousin Dick. You know poor mamma's insane idea that Dick wants to marry me.

666

'Pray, how long are you going to encourage Dick's attentions?' she asked me.

"Until I find out he is paying me attentions,' I replied. "Then she said things that made me go out of the room, and I refused to go back until papa came home. Dick, indeed! "Dick is a real good fellow, though, and I like him tremendously. He is as good-natured as a big man always is, and never in the way like little men. Pray, Kate, how is it that little men take up so much more room than big men? He says wonderful things, too; and invents stories, if you ask him for an anecdote, as if he was a Trollope. I hold up my finger, and say—' Dick, a Mexican story.' And he begins at once quite gravely, 'When I was in Texas,' and then always something new. He confessed to me the other day that he invents. Mamma says that he is a young man of excellent religious principles. If so, my dear, he takes care to keep his light hidden, for he never goes to church, wanted once to play cards on Sunday, smokes cigars all day if he can, and I once heard him swear at Silly Billy till the poor man turned white. But I like Dick. Here he comes, and I am going to be shown the lasso trick-wait till I come back.

"Oh, Kate, my dear, Cousin Dick is an Admirable Crichton. He has been throwing the lasso as they do in his beloved

Texas-Lucy and I looking on. The miserable victim was a colt; its leg is hurt. Colts in this country don't understand the lasso, as I told Dick. He swore in Spanish. It sounded very deep and grand, like a church organ in a rage, not like the ugly and vulgar sounds which issue from the mouth of the rural Briton. Kate, my dear, I'm very miserable, because I can't help being happy sometimes, and I am afraid you and Frank are not. Forgive me, dear. Mamma refuses to recognize our engagement. Of course, that makes no difference. Poor old Uncle Mortiboy looks greatly changed in the last few weeks. His hand shakes, his head shakes, and he shakes all over. Lucy goes to see him oftener than I, because she is a better girl than your wicked Grace-whom you and Flove so much-and does her duty. He sits and shakes, and talks perpetually about what is going to happen when he is gone.

"When I am gawn,' he says in such a doleful way that you would think he was going at once. But he is quite happy when Dick is with him. He follows him with his eyes. He cannot bear to spend his evenings without him. Dick, like a good creature, sits and talks with his father every night of his life. I've told you all the gossip I know. Papa wants me to give his love to you, and tell Frank to keep a good heart. The dear old man! I had a walk and a talk with him yesterday all over the ploughed fields, and came back with mud up to my eyes. I told him, what I tell you, that I love Frank, and shall never marry anybody else, even if anybody should ask me. Cousin Dick, indeed!

"Please give my kind remembrances, and Lucy's and mamma's, to Mrs. Melliship and to Mr. Frank Melliship-is that cold enough for you ?—and send me a long and happy letter."

Dick was not without his troubles. The old man bored him almost beyond endurance. To make the evenings livelier, he conceived the brilliant idea of keeping his father's weekly bottle of gin always half full. Then the old man, quite unconsciously, took to drinking double and treble allowance and would go to bed an hour earlier, staggering up the stairs. In the morning, he was tremulous and nervous. He did not like to be left alone. The death of Mr. Melliship seemed to have suddenly aged him. At night he lay awake-unless he had taken more spirit than was good for him-trembling at

imaginary whispers. Ghrimes, at the bank, found that his capacity for business was gone altogether; and yet he would not give up his attendance at the bank.

With all this, tighter than ever with the money. Nothing to be got out of him for any of Dick's foreign schemes. And all the more hopeless now, because the old man had only one thought-to keep his son at home.

Second trouble-Polly. Once a week or so, she came to see him. Dick went to the trysting-place with as much joy as a boy goes to keep an appointment with the head-master after school. She was always gushing and affectionate; always wanting more money for little Bill; and, which was his only comfort, always afraid of him.

Third trouble-Lafleur. With his usual bad luck, this worthy had got through his share of the thousand, and was wanting more. Before long, his own would be all gone. And his promise to raise five thousand in three months! More than two of them gone. And how to raise the money?

CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH.

WAS about this time Mr. Mortiboy took to sending for his lawyer three or four times a week. After each interview he would be more nervous, more shaken than before. He kept the reason of these visits a secret-even from Ghrimes. But to Lucy Heathcote-with whom he spoke more frankly of himself than to any other human being the old man told some of his perplexities.

"I am getting old, my dear, and I am getting shaky. I've a deal to trouble and worry

me.

"But there is Cousin Dick, uncle."

'Yes, there's Dick. But it is all my property that's on my mind. I always intended to do something for you two, my dear-always.'

"Never mind that now, uncle."

"And perhaps I ought for the young Melliships as well though why for them I don't know. And I'm ill, Lucy. Sometimes I think I am going to die. And-and-I try to read-the-Bible at night, my dear; but it's no use-it's no All the property is on my mind, and I can think of nothing else."

use.

"Shall I read to you, uncle ?"

"No, child!-nonsense!-certainly not," he replied, angrily. "I'm not a Pauper.'

Being "read to," whether you liked it or not, suggested the condition of such helpless impecuniosity, that he turned quite red in the face, and gasped. His breath was getting rather short.

Presently he went on complaining again.

"At night I see coffins, and dream of funerals and suicides. It's a dreadful thing to have a funeral going on all night long. I think, my dear, if I had the property off my mind, I should be better. If it was safe, and in good hands, I should be very much easier. If it was still growing, I should be lighter in my mind. Dick is very good. He sits with me every evening. But he can't be with me when I am asleep, you know, Lucy; and these dreams haunt me.'

The old man passed his hand across his brow, and sighed heavily. He could not bear even to think of death; and here was death staring him in the face every night.

"I know I ought to make a will," he went on to his patient listener, Lucy, who did not repeat things-as the old man knew very well. "I ought to; but I can't, my dear. There's such a lot of money, and so many people; and after one is gone, one will be abused for not doing what was right; and— and-I haven't the heart to divide it, my dear. It's such a shame to cut Property up, and split it into pieces."

66 Can't you take advice, uncle ?"

"I don't trust to anybody, Lucy. They're all thinking of themselves-all of them." This, as if he had been himself the most disinterested of mankind.

"There's Mr. Ghrimes. You trust him, uncle ?"

Well-yes-I trust him. But then he's well paid for it, you sec."

Ghrimes got £200 a year for his work, which a London employer would have considered cheap at five times that sum. 66 And you trust Cousin Dick.",

3

*

"Yes," said the old man, brightening up a little. "I do trust Dick. I trust my boy. He is a great comfort to mea great comfort. He is very clever-Dick is-he has a wonderful head for business. He manages everything well. Look what a window he got from London for your poor Aunt Susan's memorial-and for twenty pounds. Oh, Dick does everything well, and he's a great comfort to me. But it is not only the division of the Property, Lucy-think of the Awful Probate duty! There's a waste of money-there's a sacrifice; a most iniquitous tax, a tax upon prudence! I'm not so well off as I ought to be, my dear-not so well as my poor father thought I should be, but I've done pretty well. And the probate duty is a terrible thing to think of—it's really appalling. Two per cent. on money left to your son! Thousands will be lost! Dear me! dear me! Thousands!"

These confidences were for Lucy Heathcote alone, with whom the old man felt himself safe. No talk of property to Dick; no confessions to his son; no asking of advice; no offers of money. So far from giving or lending, Mr. Mortiboy received from Dick, every Saturday morning, a sovereign in payment for a week's board, and two shillings and threepence for a bottle of gin. While pocketing the money, the parent never failed to remind his son of the cheapness of his board, and the fact that he was charged nothing at all for bed and lodging. He always added, solemnly, that it gave him great pleasure to entertain his son, even at a loss.

As for their evenings together, they were always alike. A single candle lighted the kitchen where they sat; the father in a Windsor arm-chair, with his bottle of gin at his elbow, and a long pipe in his mouth; the son opposite him, with a short pipe and another bottle. Between them a deal table. As Dick grew tired of telling stories, he used sometimes to beguile the hours by showing his father tricks with the cards. Mr. Mortiboy, senior, did not approve of games of chance. They gave no opening for the prudent employment of capital, and risked Property. Nor did he approve of so-called games of skill, such as whist; because the element of chance entered so largely into them, that, as he argued, not the richest man was safe. But his admiration was excessive when Dickfeigning, for the sake of effect, that his father was a credulous and simple-minded person-showed how thousands might be won by the turning up of a certain card; telling which card had been touched; making cards hide themselves in pockets,