“Utterly hopeless.  Your plan of providing him with a wife would be very good if it were feasible.  I should be very glad to see him settled.  But if he will marry no one but Florence Mountjoy he must remain unmarried.  Augustus has had his hand in that business, and don’t let us dabble in it.”  Then the squire gave the lawyer full instructions as to the will which was to be made.  Mr. Grey and Mr. Bullfist were to be named as trustees, with instructions to sell everything which it would be in the squire’s legal power to bequeath.  The books, the gems, the furniture, both at Tretton and in London, the plate, the stock, the farm-produce, the pictures on the walls, and the wine in the cellars, were all named.  He endeavored to persuade Mr. Grey to consent to a cutting of the timber, so that the value of it might be taken out of the pocket of the younger brother and put into that of the elder.  But to this Mr. Grey would not assent.  “There would be an air of persecution about it,” he said, “and it mustn’t be done.”  But to the general stripping of Tretton for the benefit of Mountjoy he gave a cordial agreement.

“I am not quite sure that I have done with Augustus as yet,” said the squire.  “I had made up my mind not to be put out by trifles; not to be vexed at a little.  My treatment of my children has been such that, though I have ever intended to do them good, I must have seemed to each at different periods to have injured him.  I have not, therefore, expected much from them.  But I have received less than nothing from Augustus.  It is possible that he may hear from me again.”  To this Mr. Grey said nothing, but he had taken his instructions about the drawing of the will.

Harry came down by the train in time for dinner.  On the journey down he had been perplexed in his mind, thinking of various things.  He did not quite understand why Mr. Scarborough had sent for him.  His former intimacy had been with Augustus, and though there had been some cordiality of friendship shown by the old man to the son’s companion, it had amounted to no more than might be expected from one who was notably good-natured.  A great injury had been done to Harry, and he supposed that his visit must have some reference to that injury.  He had been told in so many words that, come when he might, he would not find Augustus at Tretton.  From this and from other signs he almost saw that there existed a quarrel between the squire and his son.  Therefore he felt that something was to be said as to the state of his affairs at Buston.

But if, as the train drew near to Tretton, he was anxious as to his meeting with the squire, he was much more so as to the captain.  The reader will remember all the circumstances under which they two had last seen each other Harry had been furiously attacked by Mountjoy, and had then left him sprawling,—­dead, as some folks had said on the following day,—­under the rail.  His only crime had been that he was drunk.  If the disinherited one would give him his hand and let by-gones be by-gones, he would do the same.  He felt no personal animosity.  But there was a difficulty.