Standing at right angles between North Crabb and South Crabb, and from two to three miles distant, was a place called Islip. A large village or small town, as you might please to regard it; and which has not a railroad as yet.

Years and years before my days, one Thomas Chandler, who had served his articles to a lawyer in Worcester, set up in practice for himself at Islip. At the same time another lawyer, one John Paul, also set up at Islip. The two had no wish to rival one another; but each had made his arrangements, and neither of them would give way. Islip felt itself suddenly elevated to pride, now that it could boast of two established lawyers, when until then it had not possessed one, but concluded that both of them would come to grief in less than a twelve-month. At the twelve-month’s end, however, each was bearing steadily onwards, and had procured one or two valuable land agencies; in addition to the legal practice, which, as yet, was not much. So they kept themselves afloat: and if they had sometimes to eat bread-and-cheese for dinner, it was nothing to Islip.

In the second or third year, Mr. Chandler took his brother Jacob, who had qualified for a solicitor, into the office; and subsequently made him a partner, giving him a full half share. Islip thought it was an extravagantly generous thing of Mr. Chandler to do, and told him he had better be careful. And, after that, the years went on, and the Chandlers flourished. The business, what with the land agencies and other things, increased so much that it required better offices: and so Mr. Chandler, who had always lived on the premises, moved into a larger and a handsomer house some doors further up the street. Jacob Chandler had a pretty little place called North Villa, just outside Crabb, and walked to and fro night and morning. Both were married and had children. Their only sister, Mary Ann Chandler, had married a farmer in Gloucestershire, Stephen Cramp. Upon his death, a year or two afterwards, she came back and settled herself in a small farm near Islip, where she hoped to get along, having been left but poorly off. And that is enough by way of explanation.

I was only a little shaver, but I remember the commotion well. We were staying for the autumn at Crabb Cot; and, one afternoon, I, with Tod and the Squire, found myself on the Islip Road. I suppose we were going for a walk; perhaps to Islip; but I know nothing about that. All in a moment we saw a gig coming along at a frightful pace. The horse had run away.

“Here, you boys, get out of harm’s way!” cried the Squire, and bundled us over the fence into the field. “Bless my heart and mind, it is Chandler!” he added, as the gig drew nearer. “Chandler and his brother!”

Mr. Chandler was driving: we could see that as the gig flew past. He was a tall, strong man; and, perched up on the driving-cushion, looked like a giant compared with Jacob, who seemed no bigger than a shrimp beside him. Mr. Chandler’s face wore its usual healthy colour, and he appeared to retain all his presence of mind. Jacob sat holding on to the driving-cushion with his right hand and to the gig-wing with the left, and was just as white as a sheet.

“Dear me, dear me, I hope and trust there will be no accident!” groaned the Squire. “I hope Chandler will be able to hold in the horse!”

He set off back to North Crabb at nearly as fleet a pace as the horse, Tod after him, and I as fast as my small legs would take me. At the first turning we saw what had happened, for there was a group lying in the road, and people from the village were running up to it.

The horse had dashed at the bank, and turned them over. He was not hurt, the wretched animal. Jacob stood shivering in the highway, quitte pour la peur, as the French say; Mr. Chandler lay in a heap.

Jacob’s house was within a stone’s-throw, and they carried Mr. Chandler to it on a hurdle, and sent for Cole. The Squire went in with the rest; Tod and I sat on the opposite stile and waited. And if I am able to tell you what passed within the doors, it is owing to the Squire’s having been there and staying to the end. No need was there for Cole to tell Thomas Chandler that the end was at hand: he knew it himself. There remained no hope for him: no hope. Some complicated injury had been done him inwardly, through that fiend of a horse trampling on him; and neither Cole nor all the doctors in the world could save him.

He was carried into one of the parlours and laid upon a mattress, hastily placed upon the carpet. Somebody got another gig and drove fiercely off to fetch his wife and son from Islip. He had two sons only, Thomas and George. Thomas, sixteen years old now, was in the office, articled to his father; George was at school, too far off to be sent for. Mrs. Chandler was soon with him. She had been a farmer’s daughter, and was a meek, patient kind of a woman, who gave you the idea of never having a will of her own. The office clerks went posting about Islip to find Tom; he having been out when the gig and messenger arrived.

It chanced that Jacob Chandler’s wife had gone abroad that day, taking her daughters; so the house was empty, save for the two maid-servants. The afternoon wore on. Cole had done what he could (which was nothing), and was now waiting in the other parlour with the clergyman; who had also done all that was left to do. The Squire stayed in the room; Chandler seemed to wish it; they had always liked one another. Mrs. Chandler knelt by the mattress, holding the dying hand: Jacob stood leaning against the book-case with folded arms and looking the very picture of misery: the Squire sat on the other side, nursing his knees.

“There’s no time to alter my will, Betsy,” panted poor Chandler, who could only speak by snatches: “and I don’t know that I should alter it if I had the time. It was made when the two lads were little ones. Everything is left to you without reserve. I know I can trust you to do a mother’s part by them.”

“Always,” responded Mrs. Chandler meekly, the silent tears rolling down her cheeks.

“You will have enough for comfort. Thoughts have crossed me at times of making a fortune for you and the lads: I was working on and laying by for it. How little we can foresee the future! God alone knows what that will be, and shapes it out. Not a day, not a day can we call our own: I see it now. With your own little income, and the interest of what I have been able to put by, you can live. There will also be money paid to you yearly from the practice——”

He was stopped by want of breath. Could not go on.

“Do not trouble yourself to think of these things,” she said, catching up a sob, for she did not want to give way before him. “We shall have quite plenty. As much as I wish for.”

“And when Tom is out of his articles he will take my place, you know, and will be well provided for and help you,” said Mr. Chandler, taking up the word again. “And George you must both of you see to. If he has set his heart upon being a farmer instead of a clergyman, as I wished, why, let him be one. ‘If you are a clergyman, Georgy, you will always be regarded as a gentleman,’ I said to him the other day when he was at home, telling me he wanted to be a farmer. But now that I am going, Betsy, I see how valueless these distinctions are. Provided a man does his duty in the world and fears God, it hardly matters what his occupation in it is. It is for so short a time. Why, it seems only the other day that I was a boy, and now my few poor years are over, and I am going into the never-ending ages of immortality!”

“It shall all be as you wish, Thomas,” she whispered.

“Ay,” he answered. “Jacob, come here.”

Jacob let his arms drop, and left the book-case to stand close over his brother. Mr. Chandler lifted his right hand, and Jacob stooped and took it.

“When we drew up our articles of partnership, Jacob, a clause was inserted, that upon the death of either of us, the survivor should pay a hundred and fifty pounds a-year out of the practice to those the other should leave behind him, provided the business could afford it. You remember that?”

“Yes,” said Jacob. “I wish it had been me to go instead of you, Thomas.”

“The business will afford it well, as you know, and more than afford it: you might well double it, Jacob. But I suppose you will have to take an additional clerk in my place, some efficient man, and he must be paid. So we will let it be at the hundred and fifty, Jacob. Pay that sum to my wife regularly.”

“To be sure I will,” said Jacob.

“And when Tom shall be of age he must take my place, you know, and draw his full half share. That was always an understood thing between you and me, Jacob, if I were taken. Your own son will, I suppose, be coming in shortly: so that in later years, when you shall have followed me to a better world, the old firm will be perpetuated in them—Chandler and Chandler. Tom and Valentine will divide the profits equally, as we have divided them.”

“To be sure,” said Jacob.

“Yes, yes; my mind is at rest on the score of worldly things. I would that all dying men could be as much at ease. God bless and prosper you, Jacob! You’ll give a fatherly eye over Tom and George in my place, and lead them in straightforward paths.”

“That I will,” said Jacob. “I wish with all my heart this dreadful day’s work had never happened!”

“And so will I too,” put in the Squire. “I’ll look a bit after your two boys myself, Chandler.”

Mr. Chandler, drawing his hand from his brother, held it towards the Squire. At that moment, a suppressed stir was heard outside, and an eager voice. Tom had arrived: having run all the way from Islip.

“Where’s papa?—where’s he lying? Is he hurt very much?”

Cole appeared, marshalling him in. A well-grown young fellow for sixteen, with dark eyes, a fresh colour, and a good-natured face; altogether, the image of his father. Cole took a look down at the mattress, and saw how very much nearer something was at hand than it had been only a few minutes before.

“Hush, Tom,” he said, hastily pouring some drops into half a wine-glass of water. “Gently, lad. Let me give him this.”

Poor Tom Chandler, aghast at what he beheld, was too frightened to speak. A sudden stillness fell upon him, and he knelt down by the side of his mother. Cole’s drops did no good. There could be only a few last words.

“I never thought it would end thus—that I should not have time granted me for even a last farewell,” spoke the dying man in a faint voice and with a gasp between every word, as he took Tom’s hand. “Tom, my boy, I cannot say to you what I would.”

Tom gave a great burst as though he were choking, and was still the next minute.

“Do your duty, my boy, before God and man with all the best strength that Heaven gives you. You must some time lie as I am lying, Tom; it may be with as little warning of it as I have had: at the best, this life will last such a little while as compared with life eternal. Fear God; find your Saviour; love and serve your fellow-creatures. Make up your accounts with your conscience morning and evening. And—Tom——”

“Yes, father; yes, father?” spoke poor Tom, entreatingly, as the voice died away, and he was afraid that the last words were dying away too and would never be spoken.

“Take care of your mother and be dutiful to her. And do you and George be loving brothers to each other always: tell him I enjoined it with my closing breath. Poor George! if I could but see him! And—and—and——”

“Yes, oh yes, I will; I will indeed! What else, father?”

But there was nothing else. Just two or three faint words as death came in, and a final gasp to close them.

“God be with you ever, Tom!”

That was all. And the only other thing I recollect was seeing the sister, Mrs. Cramp, come up in a yellow chaise from the Bell at Islip, and pass into the house, as we sat on the gate. But she was just too late.

You may be sure that the affair caused a commotion. So grave a calamity had never happened at North Crabb. Mr. Chandler and his brother had started from Islip in their gig to look at some land that was going to be valued, which lay a mile or two on the other side Crabb on the Worcester Road. They had driven the horse a twelvemonth and never had any trouble with him. It was supposed that something must have been wrong with the harness. Any way, he had started, kicked, backed, and finally run away.

I saw the funeral: standing with Tod in the churchyard amidst many other spectators, and reading the inscriptions on the grave-stones while we waited. Mr. Chandler had been taken back to his house at Islip, and was brought from thence to Crabb to be buried. Tom and George Chandler came in the first mourning-coach with their Uncle Jacob and his son Valentine. In the next sat two other relatives, with the Squire and Mr. Cole.

Changes followed. Mrs. Chandler left the house at Islip, and Jacob Chandler and his family moved into it. She took a pretty cottage at North Crabb, and Tom walked to the office of a morning and home again at night. Valentine, Jacob’s only son, was removed from school at once to be articled to his father. He was fifteen, just a year younger than Tom.

Years passed on. Tom grew to be four-and-twenty, Valentine three-and-twenty. Both of them were good-looking young men, tall and straight; but Tom had the pleasanter face, address, and manners. Every one liked him. Crabb had thought when Tom attained his majority, and got his certificate as a solicitor, that his uncle would have taken him into partnership. The Squire had said it publicly. Instead of that, old Jacob gave him a hundred a-year salary to start with, and said to him, “Now we shall go on comfortably, Tom.” Tom, who was anything but exacting, supposed his uncle wished him to add a year or two to his age and some more experience, before taking him in. So he thanked old Jacob for the hundred a-year, and was contented.

George Chandler had emigrated to Canada. Which rather gave his mother a turn. Some people they knew had gone out there, purchased land, and were doing well on it; and George resolved to follow them. George had been placed with a good farmer in Gloucestershire and learnt farming thoroughly. That accomplished, he began to talk to his mother about his prospects. What he would have liked was, to take a farm on his own account. But he had no money to stock it, and his mother had none to give him. Her income, including the hundred and fifty paid to her from the business, was about four hundred pounds, all told: home living and her sons’ expenses had taken it all, leaving no surplus. “There’s nothing for me but going to Canada, mother,” said George: “I don’t see any opening for me in England. I shall be sure to get on, over there. I am healthy and steady and industrious; and those are the qualities that make way in a new country. If the worst comes to the worst, and I do not succeed, I can but come back again.” His arguments prevailed at length, and he sailed for Canada, their friends over there promising to receive and help him.

All this while Jacob Chandler had flourished. His practice had gradually increased, and he had become a great man. Great in show and expense. It was not his fault; it was that of his family: of his own will, he would never have put a foot forward out of his plain old groove. Mrs. Jacob Chandler, empty-headed, vain, and pretty, had but two thoughts in the world: the one to make her way amidst fashionable people, the other to marry her daughters well. Originally a small tradesman’s daughter in Birmingham, she was now ridiculously upstart, and put on more airs and graces in an hour than a lady born and bred would in a lifetime. Mrs. Jacob Chandler’s people had sold brushes and brooms, soaps and pickles: she had occasionally stood behind the counter and served out the soap with her own hands; and Mrs. Jacob now looked down upon Birmingham itself and every one in it.

North Villa had not been given up, though they did move to Islip. Jacob Chandler held a long lease of it, and he sub-let it for three or four years. At the end of that period it occurred to Mrs. Jacob that she should like to keep it for herself, as a sort of country house to retire to at will. As she was the grey mare, this was done; though Jacob grumbled. So North Villa was furbished up, and some new furniture put into it; and the garden, a very nice one, improved: and Mrs. Jacob, with one or other or all three of her daughters, might be frequently seen driving her pony-carriage with its handsome ponies between North Villa and Islip, streamers flying, ribbons fluttering: you would have taken it for a rainbow coming along. The girls were not bad-looking, played and sang with open windows loud enough to frighten the passers-by, and were given to speak to one another in French at table. “Voulez-vouz donner-moi la sel, Clementina?” “Voulez-vous passer-moi le moutarde, Georgiana?” “Voulez-vous envoyer-moi les poivre, Julietta?” For, as Mrs. Jacob would have told you, they had learnt French at school; and to converse in it was of course only natural to themselves, and most instructive to any visitor who might chance to be present. Added to these advantages Mrs. and the Miss Chandlers adored dress, their out-of-door toilettes being grander than a queen’s.

All this: the two houses and the company received in them; the ponies and the groom; the milliners’ bills and the dress-makers’, made a hole in Jacob Chandler’s purse. Not too much of a hole in one sense of the word; Jacob took care of that: but it prevented him from putting by all the money he wished. He made plenty of it: more than the world supposed.

In this manner matters had gone on since the departure of George Chandler for Canada. Mrs. Chandler living quietly in her home making it a happy one for her son Tom, and treasuring George’s letters from over the sea: Mrs. Jacob Chandler and her daughters keeping the place alive; Valentine getting to be a very fine gentleman indeed; old Jacob sticking to business and pocketing his gains. The first interruption came in the shape of a misfortune for Mrs. Chandler. She lost a good portion of her money through a calamity that you have heard of before—the bursting-up of Clement Pell. It left her with very little, save the hundred and fifty pounds a-year paid to her regularly by Jacob. Added to this was the hundred a-year Tom earned, and which his uncle had not increased. And this brings us down to the present time, when Tom was four-and-twenty.

Jacob Chandler sat one morning in his own room at his office, when a clerk came in and said Mrs. Chandler from Crabb was asking to see him. Cordiality had always subsisted between the two families, though they were not much together; Mrs. Chandler disliking their show; Mrs. Jacob and her daughters intensely despising one who wore black silk for best, and generally made her puddings with her own fingers. “So low-lived, you know, my dears,” Mrs. Jacob would say, with a toss of her bedecked head.

Jacob heard his clerk’s announcement with annoyance; the lines on his brow grew deeper. He had always been a shrimp of a man, but he looked like a shrivelled one now. His black clothes sat loosely upon him; his white neckcloth, for he dressed like a parson, seemed too large for his thin neck.

“Mrs. Chandler can come in,” said he, after a few moments’ hesitation. “But say I am busy.”

She came in, putting back her veil: she had worn a plain-shaped bonnet with a white border ever since her husband died. It suited her meek, kind, and somewhat homely face, on which the brown hair, streaked with grey, was banded.

“Jacob, I am sorry to disturb you, especially as you are busy; but I have wanted to speak to you for some time now and have not liked to come,” she began, taking the chair that stood near the table at which he sat. “It is about Tom.”

“What about him?” asked Jacob. “Has he been up to any mischief?”

“Mischief! Tom! Why, Jacob, I hardly think there can be such another young man as he, for steadiness and good conduct; and, I may say, for kindness. I have never heard anything against him. What I want to ask you is, when you think of making a change?”

“A change?” echoed Jacob, as if the words puzzled him, biting away at the feather of his pen. “A change?”

“Is it not time that he should be taken into the business? I—I thought—and Tom I know also thought, Jacob—that you would have done it when he was twenty-one.”

“Oh, did you?” returned Jacob, civilly.

“He is twenty-four, you know, now, Jacob, and naturally wishes to get forward in life. I am anxious that he should; and I think it is time—forgive me for saying it, Jacob—that something was settled.”

“I was thinking of raising Tom’s salary,” coolly observed Jacob; “of giving him, say, fifty pounds a-year more. Valentine has been bothering me to do the same by him; so I suppose I must.”

The fixed colour on Mrs. Chandler’s thin cheeks grew a shade deeper. “But, Jacob, it was his father’s wish, you know, that he should be taken into partnership, should succeed to his own share of the business; and I thought you would have arranged it ere this. An increase of salary is not the thing at all: it is not that that is in question.”

“Nothing can be so bad for a young man as to make him his own master too early,” cried Jacob. “I’ve known it ruin many a one.”

“You promised my husband when he was dying that it should be so,” she gently urged. “Besides, it is Tom’s right. I understood that when he was of a proper age, he was to come in, in accordance with a previous arrangement made between you and poor Thomas.”

Jacob bit the end of the pen right off and nearly swallowed it. “Thomas left all things in my hands,” said he, coughing and choking. “Tom must acquire some further experience yet.”

“When do you propose settling it, then? How long will it be first?”

“Well, that depends, you know. I shall see.”

“Will it be in another year? Tom will be five-and-twenty then.”

“Ay, he will: and Val four-and-twenty. How time flies! It seems but the other day that they were in jackets and trousers.”

“But will it be then—in another year? You have not answered me, Jacob.”

“And I can’t answer you,” returned Jacob. “How can I? Don’t you understand me when I say I must wait and see?”

“You surely will do what is right, Jacob?”

“Well now, can you doubt it, Betsy? Of course I shall. When did you hear from George?”

Mrs. Chandler rose, obliged to be satisfied. To urgently press any interest of her own was not in her nature. As she shook hands with Jacob she was struck with the sickly appearance of his face.

“Are you feeling quite well, Jacob? You look but poorly.”

“I have felt anything but well for a long time,” he replied, in a fretful tone. “I don’t know what ails me: too much work, perhaps, but I seem to have strength for nothing.”

“You should give yourself a rest, Jacob, and take some bark.”

“Ay. Good-day.”

Now it came to pass that in turning out of the house, after nodding to Tom and Valentine, who sat at a desk side by side in the room to the left, the door of which stood open, Mrs. Chandler saw the Squire on the opposite side of the street, and crossed over to him. He asked her in a joking way whether she had been in to get six and eightpenceworth of law. She told him what she had been in for, seeing no reason for concealing it.

“Bless me, yes!” cried he, in his impulsive way. “I’m sure it’s quite time Tom was in the firm. I’ll go and talk to Jacob.”

And when he got in—making straight across the street with the words, and through the passage, and so to the room without halt or ceremony—he saw Jacob leaning back in his chair, his hands thrust into his black side-pockets, and his head bent on his chest in deep thought. The Squire noticed how deep the lines in his brow had grown, just as Mrs. Chandler had.

“But you know, Jacob Chandler, that it was an agreement with the dead,” urged the Squire, in his eagerness, after listening to some plausible (and shuffling) remarks from Jacob.

“An agreement with the dead!” repeated Jacob, looking up at the Squire for explanation. They were both standing on the matting near the fender: which was filled with an untidy mass of torn and twisted scraps of paper. “What do you mean, Squire? I never knew before that the dead could make an agreement.”

“You know what I mean,” cried the Squire, hotly. “Poor Thomas was close upon death at the time you and he had the conversation: he wanted but two or three minutes of it.”

“Oh, ah, yes; that’s true enough, so far as it goes, Squire,” replied Jacob, pulling up his white cravat as if his throat felt cold.

“Well,” argued the Squire. “Did not you and he agree that Tom was to come in when he was twenty-one? Both of you seemed to imply that there existed a previous understanding to that effect.”

“There never was a word said about his coming in when he was twenty-one,” contended Jacob.

“Why, bless my heart and mind, do you suppose my ears were shut, Jacob Chandler?” retorted the Squire, beginning to rub his head with his red silk handkerchief. “I heard the words.”

“No, Squire. Think a bit.”

Jacob spoke so calmly that the Squire began to rub up his memory as well as his head. He had no cause to suppose Jacob Chandler to be other than an honourable man.

“‘When Tom shall be of age, he must take my place:’ those were I think the very words,” repeated the Squire. “I can see your poor brother’s face now as he lay down on the floor and spoke them. It had death in it.”

“Yes, it had death in it,” acquiesced Jacob, in a tone of discomfort. “What he said was this, Squire: ‘When Tom shall be of an age.’ Meaning of course a suitable age to justify the step.”

“I don’t think so: I did not hear it so,” persisted the Squire. “There was no ’an’ in it. ‘When Tom shall be of age:’ that was it. Meaning when he should be twenty-one.”

“Oh dear, no; quite a mistake. You can’t think my ears would deceive me at such a time as that, Mr. Todhetley. And about our own business too.”

“Well, you ought to know best, of course, though my impression is that you are wrong,” conceded the Squire. “Put it that it was as you say: don’t you think Tom Chandler is now quite old enough for it to be acted upon?”

“No, I don’t,” replied Jacob. “As I have just told his mother, nothing can be more pernicious for a young man than to be made his own master too early. Nine young fellows out of every ten would get ruined by it.”

“Do you think so?” asked the Squire, dubiously.

“I am sure so, Squire. Tom Chandler is steady now, for aught I know to the contrary; but just let him get the reins into his hands, and you’d see what it would be. That is, what it might be. And I am not going to risk it.”

“He is as steady-going a young man as any one could wish for; diligent, straightforward. Not at all given to spending money improperly.”

“Because he has not had it to spend. I have known many a young blade to be quiet and cautious while his pockets were empty; and as soon as they were filled, perhaps all at once, he has gone headlong to rack and ruin. How do we know that it would not be the case with Tom?”

“Well, I—I don’t think it would be,” said the Squire, with hesitation, for he was coming round to Jacob’s line of argument.

“But I can’t act upon ‘thinking,’ Squire; I must be sure. Tom will just stay on with me at present as he is; so there’s an end of it. His salary is going to be raised: and I—I consider that he is very well off.”

“Well, perhaps he’ll be none the worse for a little longer spell of clerkship,” repeated the Squire, coming wholly round. “And now good-morning. I’m rather in a hurry to-day, but I thought it right to put in a word for Tom’s sake, as I was present when poor Thomas died.”

“Good-morning, Mr. Todhetley,” answered Jacob, as he sat down to his desk again.

But he did not get to work. He bent his head on his neckcloth as before, and set on to think. What had just passed did not please him at all: for Jacob Chandler was not devoid of conscience; though it was an elastic one, and he was in the habit of deadening it at will. It was not his intention to take his nephew into partnership at all; then or later. Almost ever since the day of his brother’s funeral he had looked at matters after his own fashion, and soon grew to think that Tom had no manner of right to a share in the business; that as Thomas was dead and gone, it was all his, and ought to be all his. He and Thomas had shared it between them: therefore it was only just and proper that he, the survivor, should take it. That’s how Jacob Chandler, who was the essence of covetousness, had been reasoning, and his mind was made up.

It was therefore very unpleasant to be pounced upon in this way by two people in one morning. Their application as regarded Tom himself would not have troubled him: he knew how to put disputants off civilly, saying neither yes nor no, and promising nothing: but what annoyed him was the reminiscence they had called up of his dying brother. Jacob intended to get safely into the world above, some day, by hook or by crook; he went to church regularly, and considered himself a model of good behaviour. But these troublesome visitors had somehow contrived to put before his conscience the fact that he might be committing a lifelong act of injustice on Tom; and that, to do so, was not the readiest way of getting to heaven. Was that twelve o’clock? How the morning had passed!

“Uncle Jacob, I am going over to Brooklands about that lease. Have you any particular instructions to give me?”

It was Tom himself who had entered. A tall, good-looking, fresh-coloured young man, who had honesty and kindliness written on every line of his open face.

Jacob lifted his bent head, and drew his chair nearer his table as if he meant to set to work in earnest. But his mouth took a cross look.

“Who told you to go? I said Valentine was to go.”

“Valentine has stepped out. He asked me to go for him.”

“Where has he stepped to?”

“He did not say,” replied Tom, evasively. For he knew quite well where Valentine was gone: to the Bell inn over the way. Valentine went to the Bell a little too much, and was a little too fond of the Bell’s good liquor.

“I suppose you can go, then. No, I have no instructions: you know what to say as well as I do. We don’t give way a jot, mind. Oh, and—Tom!” added Jacob, calling him back as he went out.

“Yes, sir.”

“I am intending to raise your salary. From the beginning of next month, you will have a hundred and fifty a-year.”

“Oh, thank you, Uncle Jacob.”

Tom spoke as he in his ready good-nature felt—brightly and gratefully. Nevertheless, a shade of disappointment did cross his mind, for he thought his position in the house ought to be a different one.

“And I am sure it is quite as much as I ought to do for him,” argued Jacob with his conscience. And he put away unpleasant prickings and set to work like a house on fire.

It was one o’clock when Valentine came in. He had an excuse ready for his father: the latter, turning out of the clerks’ room, chanced to see him enter. “He had been down to Tyler’s to see if he could get that money from them.” It was an untruth, for he had stayed all the while at the Bell; and his father noticed that his face was uncommonly flushed. Old Jacob had had his suspicions before; yes, and spoken of them to Valentine: he now motioned him to go before him into the private room.

“You have been drinking, sir!”

“I!—good gracious, no,” returned Valentine, boldly, his blue eyes fearlessly meeting his father’s. “What fancies you do pick up!”

“Valentine, when I was your age I never drank a drop of anything till night, and then it was only a glass of beer with my supper. It seems to me that young men of the present day think they can drink at all hours with impunity.”

“I don’t drink, father.”

“Very well. Take care you do not. It is a habit more easily acquired than left off. Look here: I am going to give you fifty pounds a-year more. Mind you make it do: and do not spend it in waste.”

It was not very long after this that Jacob Chandler had a shock: a few months, or so. During that time he had been growing thinner and weaker, and looked so shrivelled up that there seemed to be nothing left of him. Islip, small place though it was, had a market-day—Friday;—when farmers would drive or walk in and congregate at the Bell. One afternoon, just as the ordinary was over, Jacob went to the inn, as was his general custom: he had always some business or other to transact with the farmers; or, if not, something to say. His visit to them over, he said good-day and left: but the next minute he turned back, having forgotten something. Some words fell on his ear as he opened the door.

“Ay. He is not long for this world.”

They were spoken by old Farmer Blake—a big, burly, kind-hearted man. And Jacob Chandler felt as certain that they were meant to apply to himself as though his name had been mentioned. He went into a cold shiver, and shut the door again without entering.

Was it true, he asked himself, as he walked across the street to his office: was it indeed a fact that he was slowly dying? A great fear fell upon him: a dread of death. What, leave all this beautiful sunshine, this bright world in which he was so busy, and pass into the cold dark grave! Jacob turned sick at the thought.

It was true that he had long been ailing; but not with any specific ailment. He could not deny that he was now more like a shadow than a man, or that every day seemed to bring him less of strength. Passing into his dining-parlour instead of into his private business room, he drank two glasses of wine off at once, and it seemed to revive him. He was a very abstemious man in general.

Well, if Farmer Blake did say it—stupid old idiot!—it was not obliged to be true, reflected Jacob then. People judged by his spareness: he wished he could get a little fatter. And so he reasoned and persuaded himself out of his fears, and grew sufficiently reassured to transact his business, always pressing on a Friday.

But that same evening, Jacob Chandler drove to North Villa in his gig, telling his wife he should sleep there for a week or two, for the sake of the fresh air. And the next morning, before he went to Islip, he sent for the doctor—Cole.

“People are saying you won’t live!” repeated Cole, having listened to Jacob’s confidential communication. “I don’t see why you should not live. Let’s examine you a bit. You should not take up fancies.”

Cole could find nothing particular the matter with him. He recommended him rest from business, change of air, and a generous diet. “Try it for a month,” said he.

“I can’t try it—except the diet,” returned Jacob. “It’s all very well for you to talk about rest from business, Cole, but how am I to take rest? My business could not get on without me. Business is a pleasure to me; it’s not a pain.”

“You want rest from it all the same,” said Cole. “You have stuck closely to it this many a year.”

“My mother died without apparent cause,” said Jacob, dreamily. “She seemed just to drift out of life. About my age, too.”

“That’s no reason why you should,” argued Cole.

Well, they went on, talking at one another; but nothing came of it. And Cole left, saying he would send him in some tonics to take.

By the evening it was known all over the place that Jacob Chandler was ill and had sent for Cole. People talked of it the next morning as they went to church. Jacob appeared, looking much as usual, and sat down in his pew. The next to come in was Mrs. Cramp; who walked over to our church sometimes. She stayed to dine with the Lexoms, and went to call at North Villa after dinner; finding Mrs. Jacob and the rest of them at dessert with a guest or two. Jacob was somewhere in the garden.

Mrs. Cramp found him in the latticed arbour, and sat down opposite to him, taking up her brown shot-silk gown, lest the seat should be dusty. When she told him it was the hearing of his illness which had brought her over to Crabb, he turned cross. He was not ill, he said; only a trifle out of sorts, as every one else must be at times and seasons. By dint of questioning, Mrs. Cramp, who was a stout, comely woman, fond of having her own way, got out of him all Cole had said.

“And Cole is right, Jacob: it is rest and change you want,” she remarked. “You are sure you do not need it? don’t tell me. A stitch in times saves nine, remember.”

“You know nothing about it, Mary Ann.”

“I know that you look thinner and thinner every time I see you. Be wise in time, brother.”

“Cole told me to go away to the seaside for a month. Why, what should I do, mooning for a whole month in a strange place by myself? I should be like a fish out of water.”

“Take your wife and the girls.”

“I dare say! They would only worry me with their fine doings. And look at the expense.”

“I will go with you if you like, Jacob, rather than you should go alone, though it would be an inconvenience to me. And pay my own expenses.”

“Mary Ann, I am not going at all; or thinking of it. It would be impossible for me to leave my business.”

Mrs. Cramp, turning over matters in her mind, determined to put the case plainly before him, and did so; telling him that it would be better to leave his business for a temporary period now, than to find shortly that he must leave it for ever. Jacob sat gazing out straight before him at the Malvern Hills, the chain of which lay against the sky in the distance.

“If you took my advice, brother, you would retire from business altogether. You have made enough to live without it, I suppose——”

“But I have not made enough,” he interrupted.

“Then you ought to have made it, Jacob.”

“Oughts don’t go for much.”

“What I mean is, that you ought to have made it, judging by the style in which you live. Two houses, a carriage and ponies (besides your gig), expensive dress, parties: all that should never be gone into, brother, unless the realized income justifies it.”

“It is the style we live in that has not let me put by, Mary Ann. I don’t tell you I have put nothing by: I have put a little by year by year; but it is not enough to live upon.”

“Then make arrangements for half the proceeds of the business to be given over to you. Let the two boys take to it, and——”

“Who?” cried Jacob.

“The two boys, Tom and Valentine. It will be theirs some time, you know, Jacob: let them have it at once. Tom’s name must be first, as it ought to be. Valentine——”

“I have no intention of doing anything of the kind,” interposed Jacob, sharply. “I shall keep the business in my own hands as long as I live. Perhaps I may take Valentine into it: not Tom.”

Mrs. Cramp sat for a full minute staring at Jacob, her stout hands, from which the gloves had been taken, and her white lace ruffles lying composedly on her brown gown.

“Not take Tom into the business!” she repeated, in a slow, astonished tone. “Why, Jacob, what do you mean?”

“That,” said Jacob. “Tom will stay on at a good salary: I shall increase it, I dare say, every two years, or so; but he will not come into the firm.”

“You can’t mean what you say.”

“I have meant it this many a year past, Mary Ann. I have never intended to take him in.”

“Jacob, beware! No luck ever comes of fraud.”

“Of what? Fraud?”

“Yes; I say fraud. If you deprive Tom of the place that is justly his, it will be a cheat and a fraud, and nothing short of it.”

“You have a queer way of looking at things, Mrs. Cramp. Who has kept the practice together all these years, but me? and added to it little by little, and made it worth double what it was; ay, and more than double? It is right—right, mind you, Mary Ann—that my own son should succeed to it.”

“Who made the practice in the first place, and took you into it out of brotherly affection, and made you a full partner without your paying a farthing, and for seventeen or eighteen years was the chief prop and stay of it?” retorted Mrs. Cramp. “Why, poor Thomas; your elder brother. Who made him a promise when he was lying dying in that very parlour where your wife and children are now sitting, that Tom should take his proper place in the firm when he was of age, and his half-share with it, according to agreement? Why you. You did, Jacob Chandler.”

“That was all a mistake,” said Jacob, shuffling his thin legs and wrists.

“I will leave you,” said Mrs. Cramp. “I don’t care to discuss questions while you are in this frame of mind. Is this all the benefit you got from the parson’s sermon this morning, and the text he gave out before it? That text: think of it a bit, brother Jacob, and perhaps you’ll see your way to acting differently. Remember,” she added, turning back to him for the last word, which she always had, somehow, “that cheating never prospers in the long run. It never does, Jacob; never: for where it is crafty cheating, hidden away from the sight of man, it is seen and noted by God.”

Her brown skirts (all the shades of a copper tea-kettle) disappeared round the corner by the mulberry-tree, leaving Jacob very angry and uncomfortable. Angry with her, uncomfortable in himself. Do what he would, he could not get that text out of his mind—and what right had she to bring it cropping up to him in that inconvenient way, he wondered, or to speak to him about such matters at all. The verse was a beautiful verse in itself; he had always thought so: but it was not pleasant to be tormented by it—and all through Mary Ann! There it was haunting his memory again!

“Keep innocency, and take heed unto the thing that is right: for that shall bring a man peace at the last.”

Jacob Chandler grew to look a little fresher, though not stouter, as the weeks went on: the drive, night and morning, seemed to do him good. Meeting Cole one day, he told him he felt stronger, and did not see why he should not live to be ninety. With all his heart, Cole answered, but most people found seventy long enough.

All at once, without warning, a notice appeared in the local papers, stating that Jacob Chandler had taken his son Valentine into partnership. Mrs. Chandler read it as she sat at breakfast.

“What does it mean, Tom?” she asked.

“I don’t know what it means, mother. We have heard nothing about it at the office.”

“Tom, you may depend your uncle Jacob has done it, and that he does not intend to take you in at all,” spoke Mrs. Chandler, in her strong conviction. “I shall go to him.”

She finished her breakfast and went off there and then, catching Jacob just as he was turning out of the white gate at North Villa to mount his gig: for he still came over to Crabb to sleep. The newspaper was in her hand, and she pointed to the advertisement.

“What does it mean, Jacob?” she asked, just as she had a few minutes before asked of Tom.

“Mean!” said Jacob. “It can’t have more than one meaning, can it? I’ve thought it best to let Val’s name appear in the practice, and made over to him a small share of the profits. Very small, Betsy. He won’t draw much more than he has been drawing as salary.”

“But what of Tom?” questioned poor Mrs. Chandler.

“Of Tom? Well, what of him?”

“When is he to be taken in?”

“Oh, there’s time enough for that. I can’t make two moves at once; it could not be expected of me, Betsy. My son is my son, and he had to come in first.”

“But—Jacob—don’t you think you ought to carry out the agreement made with Tom’s father—that you are bound in honour?” debated Mrs. Chandler, in her meek and non-insisting way.

“Time enough, Betsy. We shall see. And look there, my horse won’t stand: he’s always fresh in the morning.”

Shaking her hand hastily, he stepped up, took the reins from the man, and was off in a trice, bowling along at a quicker pace than usual. The poor woman, left standing there and feeling half-bewildered, saw Mrs. Jacob at one of the open windows, and crossed the lawn to speak.

“I came up about this announcement,” she said. “It is so strange a thing; we can’t understand it at all. Jacob should take Tom into partnership. Especially now that he has taken Valentine.”

“Do you think so?” drawled Mrs. Jacob; who wore a pink top-knot and dirty morning wrapper, and minced her words more than usual, for she thought the more she minced them the finer she was. “Dear me! I’m sure I don’t know anything about it. All well at home, I hope? I won’t ask you in, for I’m going to be busy. My daughters are invited to a garden-party this afternoon, and I must give directions about the trimming of their dresses. Good-morning.”

Back went Mrs. Chandler, and found her son watching for her at the door, waiting to hear what news she brought, before setting out on his usual walk.

“Your uncle slips through it like an eel, Tom,” she began. “I can make nothing of him one way or another. He does not say he will not take you in, but he does not say he will. What is to be done?”

“Nothing can be done that I know of, mother,” replied Tom; “nothing at all. Uncle Jacob holds the power in his own hands, you see. If it does not please him to give me my lawful share, we cannot oblige him to do it.”

“But how unjust it will be if he does not!”

“Yes. I think so. But, it seems to me there’s little else but injustice in the world,” added Tom, with a light smile. “You would say so if you were in a lawyer’s office and had to dive into the cases brought there. Good-bye, mother mine.”

Pretty nearly a year went on after this, bringing no change. “Jacob Chandler and Son, Solicitors, Conveyancers, and Land Agents,” flourished in gilt letters on the front-door at Islip, and Jacob Chandler and Son flourished inside, in the matter of business. But never a move was made to take in Tom. And when Jacob was asked about it, as he was once or twice, he civilly shuffled the topic off.

But, before the year had well elapsed, Jacob was stricken down. To look at him you would have said he had been growing thinner all that while, only that it seemed impossible. This time it was for death. He had not much grace given him, either: just a couple of days and a night.

He went to bed one night as well as usual, but the next morning did not get up, saying he felt “queer,” and sent for Cole. Jacob Chandler was a rare coward in illness. That fining-down process he had been going through so long had not troubled him: he thought it was only his natural constitution: and when real illness set in his fears sprang up.

“You had better stay in bed to-day,” said Cole. “I will send you a draught to take.”

“But what is it that’s the matter with me?” asked Jacob.

“I don’t know,” said Cole.

“Is it ague? Or intermittent fever coming on? See how I am shaking.”

“N—o,” hesitated Cole, either in doubt, or else because he would not say too much. “I’ll look in again by-and-by.”

Towards midday Jacob thought he’d get up, and see what that would do for him. It seemed to do nothing, except make him worse; and he went to bed again. Cole looked in three times during the day, but did not say what he thought.

In the middle of the night a paroxysm of illness came on again, and a servant ran to knock up the doctor. Jacob was shaking the very bed, and seemed in awful fear.

And in the morning he appeared to know that he had not many hours to live. Knew it by intuition, for Cole had not told him. An express went flying to Worcester for Dr. Malden: but Cole knew—and told it later—that all the physicians in the county could not save him.

And the state of mind that Jacob Chandler went into with the knowledge, might have read many a careless man a lesson. It seemed to him that he had a whole peck of suddenly-recollected sins on his head, and misdeeds to be accounted for. He remembered Tom Chandler then.

“I have not done by him as I ought; it lies upon me with an awful weight,” he groaned. “Valentine, you must remedy the wrong. Take him in, and give him his proper share. I should like to see Tom. Some one fetch him.”

Tom had to be fetched from Islip. He came at once, his long legs skimming over the ground quickly; and he entered the sick-chamber with the cordial smile on his open face, and took his uncle’s hand.

“It shall all be remedied, Tom; all the injustice; and you shall have your due rights. I see now how unjust it was: I don’t know what God’s thinking of me for it. I wanted to make a good provision for my old age, you see; to be able to live at ease; and now there is no old age for me: God is taking me before it has come on.”

“Don’t distress yourself, Uncle Jacob; it will be all right. And I’m sure I have not thought much about it.”

“But others have,” groaned Jacob. “Your mother; and Mary Ann; and—and Squire Todhetley. They have all been on at me at times. But I shut my ears. Oh dear! I wish God would let me live a few years over again! I’d try and be different. What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?”

And that was how he kept on the best part of the day. Then he called out that he wanted his will altered. Valentine brought in pen and ink, but his father motioned him away and said it must be done by Paul. So Paul the lawyer was got over from Islip, and was shut up alone with the sick man for a quarter-of-an-hour. Next the parson came, and read some prayers. But Jacob still cried out his piteous laments, at having no time to redeem the past, until his voice was too weak to speak. At nine o’clock in the evening all was over.

The disease that killed him must have been making silent progress for a good while, Cole said, when the truth was ascertained: but he had never seen it develop itself with so little warning, or prove fatal so quickly as in the case of Jacob Chandler.

Jacob Chandler, solicitor, conveyancer, and land-agent, had died: and his son Valentine (possibly taking a leaf out of the history of Jonas Chuzzlewit) determined that he should at least be borne to the grave with honours, if he had never had an opportunity to specially bear them in life. Crabb churchyard was a show of mutes and plumes, and Crabb highway was blocked up with black coaches. As it is considered a compliment down with us to get an invitation to a funeral, and a great slight on the dead to refuse it, all classes, from Sir John Whitney, down to Massock, the brickmaker, and little Farmer Bean, responded to Valentine Chandler’s notes. Some people said that it was Valentine’s mother, the new widow, who wished for so much display; and probably they were right.

It took place on a Saturday. I can see the blue sky overhead now, and the bright sun that shone upon the scene and lighted up the feathers. It was thought he must have died rich, and that the three daughters he left would have good portions. His son Valentine had the practice: so, at any rate, he was provided for. Tom Chandler, the nephew, made one of the mourners: and the spectators talked freely enough in an undertone, as he passed them in his place when the procession walked up the churchyard path. It seemed but the other day, they said, that his poor father was buried, killed by that lamentable accident. Time flew. Years passed imperceptibly. But Jacob—lying so still under that black and white pall, now slowly disappearing within the church—had not done the right thing by his dead brother’s son. The practice had been made by Thomas, the elder brother. Thomas took Jacob into full partnership without fee or recompense; and there was an understanding entered into between them later (but no legal agreement) that if the life of either failed his son should succeed to his post. If Thomas, the elder, died, his son Tom was to take his father’s place as senior partner in due time. Thomas did die; died suddenly; but from that hour to this, Jacob had never attempted to carry out the agreement: he had taken his own son, Valentine, into partnership, but not Tom. And Crabb knew, both North and South, for such things get about curiously, that the injustice had troubled Jacob when he was dying, and that he had charged Valentine to remedy it.

Sunday morning was not so fine: leaden clouds, threatening rain, had overshadowed the summer sky. But all the family mourners came to church, Valentine wearing his long crape hatband and shoulder scarf (for that was our custom); the widow in her costly mourning, and the three girls in theirs. The mourning was furnished, Miss Timmens took the opportunity of whispering to Mrs. Todhetley, from a fashionable black shop at Worcester: and, to judge by the frillings and furbelows, very fashionable indeed the shop must have been. Mrs. Chandler and her son Tom sat together in their own pew, Mrs. Cramp, Jacob’s sister, with them. It chanced that we were staying at Crabb Cot at the time of Jacob’s death, just as we had been at Thomas’s, and so saw the doings and heard the sayings, and the Squire was at hand for both funerals.

The next morning, Monday, Valentine Chandler took his place in the office as master for the first time, and seated himself in his late father’s chair in the private room. He and his mother had already held some conversation as to arrangements for the future. Valentine said he should live at the office at Islip: now that there was only himself he should have more to do, and did not want the bother of walking or driving to and fro morning and evening. She would live entirely at North Villa.

Valentine took his place in his father’s room; and the clerks, who had been hail-fellow-well-met with him hitherto, put on respect of manner, and called him Mr. Chandler. Tom had an errand to do every Monday morning connected with the business, and did not enter until nearly eleven o’clock. Before settling to his desk, he went in to Valentine.

They shook hands. In times of bereavement we are apt to observe more ceremony than at others. Tom sat down: which caused the new master to look towards him inquiringly.

“Valentine, I want to have a bit of talk with you. Upon what footing am I to be on here?”

“How do you mean?” asked Valentine: who was leaning back in the green leather chair with the air of his new importance full upon him, his elbows on the low arms, and an ivory paper-knife held between his fingers.

“My uncle Jacob told me that from henceforth I was to assume my right place here, Valentine. I suppose it will be so.”

“What do you call your right place?” cried Valentine.

“Well, my right place would be head of the office,” replied Tom, speaking, as he always did, cordially and pleasantly. “But I don’t wish to be exacting. Make me your partner, Valentine, and give me the second place in the firm.”

“Can’t do it, old fellow,” said Valentine, in tones which seemed to say he would like to joke the matter off. “The practice was my father’s, and it is now mine.”

“But you know that part of it ought to have been mine from the first, Valentine. That is, from the time I have been of an age to succeed to it.”

“I don’t know it, I’m sure, Tom. If it ‘ought’ to have been yours, I suppose my father would have given it to you. He was able to judge.”

Tom dropped his voice. “He sent for me that last day of his life, you know, Valentine. It was to tell me he had not done the right thing by me, but that it should be done now: that he had charged you to do it.”

“Ah,” said Valentine, carelessly, “worn-out old men take up odd fancies—fit for a lunatic asylum. My poor father must have been spent with disease, though not with age: but we did not know it.”

“Will you make me your partner?”

“No, Tom, I can’t. The practice was all my father’s, and the practice must be mine. Look here: on that same day you speak of he sent for John Paul to add a codicil to his will. Now it stands to reason that if he had wished me to take you into the firm, he would have mentioned it in that codicil and bound me down to do it.”

“And he did not?”

“Not a word of it. You are quite welcome to read the will. It is a very short and simple one: leaving what property he had to my mother, and the business and office furniture to me. The codicil Paul wrote was to decree that I should pay my mother a certain sum out of the profits. Your name is not mentioned in the will at all, from beginning to end.”

Tom made no reply. Valentine continued.

“The object of his tying me down to pay over to my mother a portion of the profits is, because she has not enough to live on without it. There need be no secret about it. I am to give her a third of the income I make, whatsoever it may be.”

“One final word, Valentine: will you be just and take me in?”

“No, Tom, I cannot. And there’s another thing. I don’t wish to be mean, I’m sure; it’s not in my nature: but with all my own expenses upon me and this third that I must hand over to my people, I fear I shall not be able to continue to give your mother the hundred and fifty a-year that my father has allowed her so long.”

“You cannot help yourself, Valentine. That much is provided for in the original partnership deed, and you are bound by it.”

“No,” dissented Valentine, flicking a speck off the front of his black coat. “My father might have been bound by it, but I am not. Now that the two original partners are dead, the deed is cancelled, don’t you see. It is not binding upon me.”

“I think you are mistaken: but I will leave that question for this morning. Is your decision, not to give me a share, final?”

“It is.”

“Let me make one remark. You say the codicil stipulates that you shall pay a third of the profits to your mother—and it is a very just and right thing to do. Valentine, rely upon it, that your father’s last intentions were that, of the other two-thirds left, one of them should be mine.”

Valentine flushed red. He had a florid complexion at all times, something like salmon-colour. Very different from Tom’s, which was clear and healthy.

“We won’t talk any more about it, Tom. How you can get such crotchets into your head, I can’t imagine. If you sit there till midday, I can say no more than I have said: I cannot take you into partnership.”

“Then I shall leave you,” said Tom, rising. He was a fine-looking young fellow, standing there with his arm on the back of the client’s chair, in which he had sat; tall and straight. His good, honest face had a shade of pain in it, as it gazed straight out to Valentine’s. He looked his full six-and-twenty years.

“Well, I wish you would leave me, Tom,” replied Valentine, carelessly. “I have heaps to do this morning.”

“Leave the office, I mean. Leave you for good.”

“Nonsense!”

“Though your father did not give me the rights that were my just due, I remained on, expecting and hoping that he would give them some time. It was my duty to remain with him; at least, my mother told me so; and perhaps my interest. But the case is changed now. I will not stay with you, Valentine, unless you do me justice; I shall leave you now. Now, this hour.”

“But you can’t, Tom. You would put me to frightful inconvenience.”

“And what inconvenience—inconvenience for life—are you putting me to, Valentine? You take my prospects from me. The position that ought to be mine, here at Islip, you refuse to let me hold. This was my father’s practice; a portion of it, at least, ought to be mine. I will not continue to be a servant where I ought to be a master.”

“Then you must go,” said Valentine.

Tom held out his hand. “Good-bye. I do not part in enmity.”

“Good-bye, Tom. I’m sorry: but it’s your fault.”

Tom Chandler went into the office where he had used to sit, opened his desk, and began putting up what things belonged to him. They made a tolerable-sized parcel. Valentine, left in his chair of state, sat on in a brown study. All the inconvenience that Tom’s leaving him would be productive of was flashing into his mind. Tom had been, under old Jacob, the prop and stay of the business; knew about everything, and had a clear head for details. He himself was different—and Valentine was never more sure of the fact than at this moment. There are lawyers and lawyers. Tom was one, Valentine was another. He, Valentine, had never much cared for business; he liked pleasure a great deal better. Indulged always by both father and mother, he had grown up self-indulgent. It was all very fine to perch himself in that chair and play the master; but he knew that, without Tom to direct things, for some time to come he should be three-parts lost. But, as to making him a partner and giving him a share? “No,” concluded Valentine emphatically, “I won’t do it.”

Tom, carrying his paper parcel, left the house and crossed the road to the post-office, which was higher up the street, to post a letter he had hastily written. It was addressed to a lawyer at Worcester. A week or two before, Tom, being at Worcester, was asked by this gentleman if he would take the place of head clerk and manager in his office. The question was put jokingly, for the lawyer supposed Tom to be a fixture at Islip: but Tom saw that he would have been glad for him to take the berth. He hoped it might still be vacant. What with one thing and another, beginning with the injustice done him at the old place and his anxiety to get into another without delay, Tom felt more bothered than he had ever felt in his life. The tempting notion of setting-up somewhere for himself came into his mind. But it went out of it again: he could not afford to risk any waste of time, with his mother’s home to keep up, and especially with this threat of Valentine’s to stop her hundred and fifty pounds a-year income.

“How do you do, Mr. Chandler?”

At the sound of the pretty voice, Tom turned short round from the post-office window, which was a stationer’s, to see a charming girl all ribbons and muslins, with sky-blue eyes and bright hair. Tom took the hand only half held out to him.

“I beg your pardon, Emma: I was reading this concert bill. The idea of Islip’s getting up a concert!”

She was the only child of John Paul the lawyer, and had as fair a face as you’d wish to see, and a habit of blushing at nothing. To watch her as she stood there, the roses coming and going, the dimples deepening, and the small white teeth peeping, did Tom good. He was reddening himself, for that matter.

“Yes, it is to be given in the large club-room at the Bell to-night,” she answered. “Shall you come over for it?”

“Are you going to it, Emma?”

“Oh yes. Papa has taken twelve tickets. A great many people are coming in to go with us.”

“I shall go also,” said Tom decidedly. And at that the roses came again.

“What a large parcel you are carrying!”

Tom held the brown-paper parcel further out at the remark.

“They are my goods and chattels,” said he. “Things that I had at the office. I have left it, Emma.”

“Left the office!” she repeated, looking as though she did not understand. “You don’t mean really left it?—left it for good?”

“I have left it for good, Emma. Valentine——”

“Here’s papa,” interrupted Emma, as a stout, elderly gentleman with iron-grey hair turned out of the stationer’s; neither of them having the least idea he was there.

“Is it you, Tom Chandler?” cried Mr. Paul.

“Yes, it is, sir.”

“And fine to be you, I should say! Spending your time in gossip at the busiest part of the day.”

“Unfortunately I have to-day no business to do,” returned Tom, smiling in the old lawyer’s face. “And I was just telling Miss Paul why. I have left the office, sir, and am looking out for another situation.”

Mr. Paul stared at him. “Why, it is your own office. What’s that for?”

“It ought to be my own office in part, as it was my father’s before me. But Valentine cannot see that, sir. He tells me he will not take me into partnership; that I ought not to expect it. I refuse to remain on any other terms; and so I have left him for good. These are my rattletraps. Odds and ends of things that I am bringing away.”

Mr. Paul continued to look at Tom in silence for a minute or two. Tom thought he was considering what he should next say. It was not that, however. “How well he would suit me! How I should like to take him! What a load of work he’d lift off my shoulders!” Those were the thoughts that were running rapidly through Mr. Paul’s mind.

But he did not speak them. In fact, he had no intention of speaking them, or of taking on Tom, much as he would have liked to do it.

“When Jacob Chandler lay dying only yesterday, as it were, he told me you would join his son; that the two of you would carry on the practice together.”

“Yes, he said the same thing to me,” replied Tom. “But Valentine refuses to carry it out. So I told him I would not be a servant where I ought to be a master, and came away.”

“And what are you going to do, young man?”

Tom smiled. He was just as much a lawyer as Mr. Paul was. “I should like to set up in practice for myself,” he answered; “but I do not yet see my way sufficiently clear to do so. There may be a chance for me at Worcester, as managing clerk. I have written to ask if the place is filled up. May I join your party to the concert to-night, sir?” he asked.

“I don’t mind—if you are going to it,” said the old lawyer: “but I can’t see what young men want at concerts?”

Tom caught Miss Emma’s eye and her blushes, and gave her a glance that told her he should be sure to come.

But, before the lapse of twenty-four hours, in spite of his non-intention, Mr. Paul had taken on Tom Chandler and, looking back in later years, it might be seen that it had been on the cards of destiny that Tom should be taken.

Lawyer Paul was still in his dining-room that evening in his handsome house just out of Islip, and before any of his expected guests had come, when Tom arrived to say he could not make one, and was shown into the drawing-room. Feasting his eyes with Miss Emma’s charming dress, and shaking her hand longer than was at all polite, Tom told her why he could not go.

“My mother took me to task severely, Emma. She asked me what I could be thinking of to wish to go to a public concert when my uncle was only buried the day before yesterday. The truth is, I never thought of that.”

“I am so sorry,” whispered Emma. “But I am worse than you are. It was I who first asked whether you meant to go. And it is to be the nicest concert imaginable!”

“I don’t care for the concert,” avowed Tom. “I—I should like to have gone to it, though.”

“At least you—you will stay and take some tea,” suggested Emma.

“If I may.”

“Would you please loose my hand?” went on Emma. “The lace has caught in your sleeve-button.”

“I’ll undo it,” said Tom. “What pretty lace it is! Is it Valenciennes? My mother thinks there’s no lace like Valenciennes.”

“It is only pillow,” replied Emma, bending her face over the lace and the buttons. “After you left this morning, papa said he wished he had remembered to ask you where he could get a prospectus of those water-works. He——”

“Mrs. and Miss Maceveril,” interrupted a servant, opening the door to show in some ladies.

So the interview was over; and Tom took the opportunity to go to the lawyer’s dining-room, and tell him about the water-works.

“You have come over from Crabb to go to this fine concert!” cried Mr. Paul, sipping his port wine; which he always took out of a claret-glass. Though never more than one glass, he would be half-an-hour over it.

“I have come to say I can’t go to it,” replied Tom. “My mother thinks it would not be seemly so soon after Uncle Jacob’s death.”

“Quite right of her, too. Why don’t you sit down? No wine? Well, sit down all the same. I want to talk to you. Will you come into my office?”

The proposal was so sudden, so unexpected, that Tom scarcely knew what to make of it. He did not know that Mr. Paul’s office wanted him.

“I have been thinking upon matters since I saw you this morning, Tom Chandler. I am growing elderly; some people would say old; and the thought has often crossed me that it might be as well if I had some one about me different from an ordinary clerk. Were I laid aside by illness to-morrow the conduct of the business would still lie upon me; and lie it must, unless I get a confidential manager, who is a qualified lawyer: one who can act in my place without reference to me. I offer you the post; and I will give you, to begin with, two hundred a-year.”

“I should like it of all things,” cried Tom in delight, eyes and face sparkling. “I am used to Islip and don’t care to leave it. Yes, sir, I will come with the greatest pleasure.”

“Then that’s settled,” said old Paul.

Just about two years had gone on, and it was hot summer again. In the same room at North Villa where poor Thomas Chandler had died, sat Valentine Chandler and his mother. It was evening, and the window was open to the garden. In another room, its window also open, sat the three girls, Georgiana, Clementina, and Julietta; all of them singing and playing and squalling.

“Not talk about business on a Sunday night! You must have grown wonderfully serious all on a sudden!” exclaimed Mrs. Chandler, tartly. “I never get to see you except on a Sunday: you know that, Valentine.”

“It is not often I can get time to come over on a week-day,” responded Valentine, helping himself to some spirits and water, which had been placed on the table after supper. “Business won’t let me.”

“If all I hear be true, it is not business that hinders you,” said Mrs. Chandler. “Be quiet, Valentine: I must speak. I have put it off and off, disliking to do it; but I must speak at last. Your business, as I am told, is falling off alarmingly; that a great deal of it has gone over to John Paul.”

“Who told you?”

“That is beyond the question, Valentine, and I am not going to make mischief. Is it true, or is it not true?”

“A little of the practice went over to Paul when Tom left me. It was not much. Some of the clients, you see, had been accustomed to Tom at our place, and they followed him. That was a crafty move of John Paul’s—getting hold of Tom.”

“I am not alluding to the odds and ends of practice that left you then, Valentine. I speak chiefly of this last year. Hardly a week has passed in it but some client or other has left you for Paul.”

“If they have, I can’t help it,” was the careless reply. “How those girls squall!”

“I suppose there is no underhand influence at work, Valentine?” she said dubiously. “Tom Chandler does not hold out baits for your clients, and so fish them away from you?”

“Well, no, I suppose not,” repeated the young lawyer, draining his glass. “I accused Tom of it one day, and for once in his life he flew into a passion, asking me what I had ever seen in him to suspect he could be guilty of such a thing.”

“No. I fear it is as I have been given to understand, Valentine: that the cause lies with you. You spend your time in pleasure instead of being at business. When clients go to the office, three times out of every five they do not find you. You are not there. You are over at the Bell, playing at billiards, or drinking in the bar.”

“What an unfounded calumny!” exclaimed Valentine.

“I have been told,” continued Mrs. Chandler, sinking her voice, “that you are getting to drink frightfully. It is nothing for clients now to find you in a state incapable of attending to them.”

“Now, mother, I insist upon knowing who told you these lies,” spluttered Valentine, getting up and striding to the window. “Let anybody come forward and prove that he has found me incapable—if he can.”

“I heard that Sir John Whitney went in the other day and could make neither top nor tail of what you said,” continued his mother, disregarding his denial. “You are agent for the little bit of property he owns here: he chanced to come over from Whitney Hall, and found you like that.”

“I’ll write to Sir John Whitney and ask what he means by saying it.”

“He did not say it—that I know of. Others were witnesses of your state as well as he.”

“If my clerks tell tales out of my office, I’ll discharge them from it,” burst forth Valentine, too angry to notice the tacit admission his words gave. “Not the clerks, you say? Then why don’t you——”

“Do be still, Valentine. Putting yourself out like this will do no good. I hope it is not true: if you assure me it is not, I am ready to believe you. All I spoke for was, to caution you, and to tell you what is being said, that you may be on your guard. Leave off going to the Bell; stick to business instead: people will soon cease talking then.”

“I dare say they will!” growled Valentine.

“If you are always at your post, ready to confer with clients, they would have no plea for leaving you and going to Paul. For all our sakes, Valentine, you must do this.”

“And so I do. If——”

“Hush! The girls are coming in. I hear them shutting the piano.”

Valentine dashed out a second supply, and drank it, not caring whether it contained most brandy or water. We are never so angry as when conscience accuses us: and it was accusing him.

In came the young ladies, laughing, romping, and pushing one another; Georgiana, Clementina, and Julietta, arrayed in all the colours of the rainbow. The chief difference Sunday made to them was, that their smartest clothes came out.

Mrs. Chandler’s accusations were right, and Valentine’s denials wrong. During the past two years he had been drifting downwards. The Bell was getting to possess so great a fascination for him that he could not keep away from it more than a couple of hours together. It was nothing for him to be seen playing billiards in the morning, or lounging in the parlour or the bar-room, drinking. One of his clerks would come interrupting him with news that some client was waiting at the office, and Valentine would put down his cue or his glass, and go flying over. But clients, as a rule, don’t like this kind of reception: they expect to find their legal advisers cool and ready on the spot.

The worst of all was the drink. Valentine had made a friend of it so long now, that he did not attempt to do without it. Thought he could not. Where he at first drank one glass he went on to drink two glasses, and the two gave place to three, or to more. Of course it told upon him. It told now and then upon his manner in the daytime: which was unfortunate. He could leave his billiards behind him and his glass, but he could not leave the effects of what the glass had contained; and it was no uncommon thing now for his clients, when he did go rushing in to them, to find his speech uncertain and his brains in a muddle. As a natural result, the practice was passing over to John Paul as fast as it could: and Tom, who was chief manager at Paul’s now, had been obliged to take on an extra clerk. Every day of his life old Paul told himself how lucky his move of engaging Tom had turned out. And this, not for the extra business he had gained: a great deal of that might have come to him whether Tom was with him or not: but because Tom had eased his shoulders of their hard work and care, and because he, the old man, had grown to like him so much.

But never a word had Mr. Paul said about raising Tom’s salary. Tom supposed he did not intend to raise it. And, much as he liked his post, and, for many reasons, his stay at Islip, he entertained notions of quitting both. Valentine had stopped the income his father had paid to Mrs. Chandler; and Tom’s two hundred a-year, combined with the trifle remaining to her out of her private income, only just sufficed to keep the home going.

It chanced that on the very same Sunday evening, when they were talking at North Villa of Valentine’s doings, Tom broached the subject to his mother. They were sitting out of doors in the warm summer twilight, sniffing the haycocks in the neighbouring field. Tom spoke abruptly.

“Should you mind my going to London, mother?”

“To London!” cried Mrs. Chandler. “What for?”

“To live.”

“You—you are not leaving Mr. Paul, are you?”

“I am thinking of it. You see, mother mine, there is no prospect of advancement where I am. It seems to me that I may jog on for ever at two hundred a-year——”

“It is enough for us, Tom.”

“As things are, yes: but nothing more. If—for instance—if I wanted to set up a home of my own, I have no means of doing it. Never shall have, at the present rate.”

Mrs. Chandler turned and looked at Tom’s face. “Are you thinking of marrying, Tom?”

“No. It is of no use to think of it. If I thought of it ever so, I could not do it. Putting that idea aside, it occurs to me sometimes to remember that I am eight-and-twenty, and ought to be doing better for myself.”

“Do you fancy you could do better in London?”

“I am sure I could. Very much better.”

Opening the Bible on her lap, Mrs. Chandler took out the spectacles that lay between the leaves, and put them into their case with trembling fingers.

“Do whatever you think best, Tom,” she said at length, having waited to steady her voice. “Children leave their parents’ home for one of their own; this Book tells us that they should do so. Had Jacob Chandler done the right thing by you, you would never have needed to leave Islip: had his son done the right thing by me, I should not be the burden to you that I am. But now that George has taken to sending me money over from Canada——”

“Burden!” interrupted Tom, laughingly. “Don’t you talk treason, Mrs. Chandler. If I do go to London, you will have to come with me, and see the lions.”

That night, lying awake, Tom made his mind up. He had been offered a good appointment in London to manage a branch office for a large legal firm—four hundred a-year salary. And he would never for a moment have hesitated to take it, but for not liking to leave old Paul and (especially) old Paul’s daughter.

Walking to Islip the next morning, he thought a bit about the best way of breaking it to Mr. Paul—who would be sure to come down upon him with a storm. By midday he had found no opportunity of speaking: people were perpetually coming in: and in the afternoon Tom had to go a mile or two into the country. In returning he overtook Emma. She was walking along the field-path under the hedge, her hat hanging on her arm by its strings.

“It is so warm,” said she, in apology, as Tom shook hands. “And the trees make it shady here. I went over to ask Mary Maceveril to come back with me and dine: but they have gone to Worcester for the day.”

“So much the better for me,” said Tom. “I want to tell you, Emma, that I am going to leave.”

“To leave!”

“I have had a very good place offered me in London. Mr. Paul knows nothing about it yet, for I did not make up my mind till last night, and I could not get a minute alone with him this morning.”

She had turned her face suddenly to the hedge, seemingly to pick a wild rose. Tom saw that the pink roses on her cheek had turned to white ones.

“I shall be very sorry to leave Islip, Emma. But what else can I do? Situated as I am now, I cannot even glance at any plans for the future. By making this change, I may be able to do so. My salary will be a good one and enable me to put by: and the firm I am going to dropped me a hint of a possible partnership.”

“I wish these dog-roses had no thorns! And I wish they would grow double, as the garden roses do!”

“So that I—having considered the matter thoroughly—believe I shall do well to make the change. Perhaps then I may begin to indulge dreams of a future.”

“There! all the petals are off!”

“Let me gather them for you. What is the matter, Emma?”

“Matter? Nothing, sir. What should there be?”

“Here is a beauty. Will you take it?”

“Thank you. I never thought you would leave papa, Mr. Chandler.”

“But—don’t you perceive my reasons, Emma? What prospect is there for me as long as I remain here? What hope can I indulge, or even glance at, of—of settling in life?”

“I dare say you don’t want to settle.”

“I do not put the question to myself, because it is so useless.”

“I shall be late for dinner. Good-bye.”

She took a sudden flight to the little white side-gate of her house, which opened to the field, ran across the garden, and disappeared within doors. Tom, catching a glimpse of her face, saw that it was wet with tears.

“Yes, it’s very hard upon her and upon me,” he said to himself. “And all the more so that I cannot in honour speak, even just to let her know that I care for her.”

Continuing his way towards the office, he met Mr. Paul, who was just leaving it. Tom turned with him, having to report to him of the business he had been to execute.

“I expected you home before this, Chandler.”

“Willis was out when I arrived there, and I had to wait for him. His wife gave me some syllabub.”

“Now for goodness’ sake don’t mix up syllabubs with law!” cried the old gentleman, testily. “That’s just you, Tom Chandler. Will Willis do as I advise him, or will he not?”

“Yes, he is willing; but upon conditions. I will explain to-morrow morning,” added Tom, as Mr. Paul laid his hand upon the handle of his front-gate, to enter.

“You can come in and explain now: and take some dinner with me.”

Emma did not know he was there until she came into the dining-room. It gave her a sort of pleasant shock. They were deep in conversation about Willis, and she sat down quietly.

“I am glad he has asked me,” thought Tom. “It will give me an opportunity of telling him about myself after dinner.”

Accordingly, when the port wine was on the table and Emma had gone, for she never stayed after the cloth was removed, Tom spoke. Old Paul was pouring out his one large glass. The communication was over in a few words, for Tom did not feel it a comfortable one to make.

“Oh!” said old Paul, after listening. “Want to better yourself, do you? Going to London to get four hundred a-year, with a faint prospect of partnership? Have had it in your mind some time to make a change? No prospects here at Islip? Can only just keep your mother? Perhaps you want to keep a wife as well, Tom Chandler?”

Tom flushed like a school-girl. As the old gentleman saw, peering at him from under his bushy grey eyebrows.

“I should very much like to be able to do it, sir,” boldly replied Tom, playing with his wine-glass. “But I can’t. I can’t as much as think of it under present circumstances.”

“Who is the young lady? Your cousin Julietta?”

Tom burst into laughter. “No, that it is not, sir.”

“Perhaps it is Miss Maceveril? Well, the Maceverils are exclusive people. But faint heart, you know, never won fair lady.”

Tom shook his head. “I should not be afraid of winning her.” But it was not Miss Maceveril he was thinking of.

“What should you be afraid of?”

“Her friends. They would not listen to me.”

“Thinking you are not rich, I suppose?”

“Knowing I am not, sir.”

“The young lady may have money.”

“There’s the evil of it,” said Tom, impulsively. “If she had none, it would be all straight and smooth for us. I would very soon make a little home for her in London.”

“It is the first time I ever heard of money being an impediment to matrimony,” observed old Paul, taking the first sip at his wine.

“Not when the money is on the wrong side, sir.”

“Has she much?”

“I don’t know in the least. She will be sure to have some: she is an only child.”

“Then it is Mary Maceveril!” nodded the old man. “You look after her, Tom, my boy. She will have ten thousand pounds.”

“Miss Maceveril would not look at me, if I wanted her ever so. She is as proud as a peacock.”

“Tut, tut! Try. Try, boy. Why, what could she want? As my partner, you might be a match for even Miss Maceveril.”

“Your what, sir?” cried Tom, in surprise, lifting his eyes from the blue-and-red checked table-cover.

“I said my partner, Tom. Yes, that is what I intend to make you: have intended it for some time. We will have no fly-away London jaunts and junkets. Once my partner, of course the world will understand that you will be also my successor: and I think I shall soon retire.”

Tom had risen from his seat: for once in his life he was agitated. Mr. Paul rose and put his hand on Tom’s shoulder.

“With this position, and a suitable income to back it, Tom, you are a match for Mary Maceveril, or for any other good girl. Go and try her, boy; try your luck.”

“But—it is of no use,” spoke Tom. “You don’t understand, sir.”

“No use! Go and try,”—pushing him towards the door. “My wife was one of the proud Wintertons, you know: how should I have gained her but for trying? I did not depreciate myself, and say I’m not good enough for her: I went and asked her to have me.”

“But suppose it is not Mary Maceveril, sir?—as indeed it is not. Suppose it is somebody nearer—nearer home?”

“No matter. Go and try, I say.”

“I—do—think—you—understand—me, sir,” cried Tom, slowly and dubiously. “I—hope there is no mistake!”

“Rubbish about mistake!” cried old Paul, pushing him towards the door. “Go and do as I bid you. Try.”

He went to look for Emma, and saw her sitting under the acacia tree on the bench, which faced the other way. Stepping noiselessly over the grass, he put his arms on her shoulders, and she turned round with a cry. But Tom would not let her go.

“I am told to come out and try, Emma. I want a wife, and your father thinks I may gain one. He is going to make me his partner; and he says he thinks I am a match for any good girl. And I am not going to London.”

She turned pale and red, red and pale, and then burst into a fit of tears and trembling.

“Oh, Tom, can it be true! Oh, Tom, Tom!”

And Tom kissed her for the first time in his life. But not for the last.

The news came out to us in a lump. Tom Chandler was taken into partnership and was to marry Emma. We wished them good luck. She was not to leave her home, for her father would not spare her: she and Tom were to live with him.

“I had to do it, you know, Squire,” said old Paul, meeting the Squire one day. “Only children are apt to be wilful. Not that I ever found Emma so. Had I not allowed it, I expect she’d have dutifully saddled herself, an old maid, upon me for life.”

“She could not have chosen better,” cried the Squire, warmly. “If there’s one young fellow I respect above another, it’s Tom Chandler. He is good to the back-bone.”

“He wouldn’t have got her if he were not; you may rely upon that,” concluded old Paul, emphatically.

So the wedding took place at Islip in the autumn, and old Paul gave Tom a month’s holiday, and told him he had better take Emma to Paris; as they both seemed, by what he could gather, red-hot to see it.

Drizzle, drizzle, drizzle, came down the rain, dropping with monotonous patter on the decaying leaves that strewed the garden. Not the trim well-kept garden it used to be, but showing signs of neglect. What with the long grass, and the leaves, and the sloppy roads, and the November skies, nothing could well look more dreary than the world looked to-day, as seen from the windows of North Villa.

Time had gone on, another year, bringing its events and its changes; as time always does bring. The chief change, as connected with this little record, lay in Valentine Chandler. He had gone to the dogs. That was Islip’s expression for it, not mine. A baby had come to Tom and Emma.

Little by little, step by step, Valentine had gone down lower and lower. Some people, who are given to bad habits, make spasmodic efforts to reform; but, so far as Islip could see, Valentine never made any. He passed more time at the Bell, or at less respectable public-houses, and drank deeper: and at last neglected his business almost entirely. Enervated and good for nothing, he would lie in bed till twelve o’clock in the day. To keep on the office seemed only a farce. Its profits were not enough to pay for its one solitary clerk. Valentine was then pulled up by an illness, which confined him to his bed, and left him in a shaky state. The practice had quite gone then, and the clerk had gone; and Valentine knew that, even though he had had sufficient energy left to try to bring them back, no clients would have returned to him.

He was going to emigrate to Canada. His friends hoped he would be steady there, and redeem the past: he gave fair promises of it. George Chandler (Tom’s brother, who was doing very well there now, with a large farm about him, and a wife and children) had undertaken to receive Valentine and help him to employment. So he would have to begin life over again.

It was all so much gall and bitterness to his mother and sisters, and had been for a long while. The tears were dropping through the fingers of Mrs. Chandler now, as she leaned on her hand and watched the dreary rain on the window-panes. With all his faults, she had so loved Valentine. She loved him still, above all the trouble he had brought; and it seemed, this afternoon, just as though her heart would break.

When the business fell off, of course her income fell off also. Valentine was to have paid her a third of the profits, but if he did not make any profits, he could not pay her any. She had the private income, two hundred a-year, which Jacob had secured to her: but what was that for a family accustomed to live in the fashion? There is an old saying that necessity has no law: and Mrs. Jacob Chandler and her daughters had proved its truth. One of the girls had gone out as a governess; one was on a prolonged visit to her aunt Cramp; and Julietta and her mother were to move into a smaller house at Christmas. The practice and the other business, once Valentine’s, and his father’s before him, had all gone over to the other firm, Paul and Chandler.

“I’m sure I don’t know what Georgiana means by writing home for money amidst all our troubles!” cried Mrs. Chandler, fretfully. “She has fifteen pounds a-year salary, and she must make that do.”

“She says her last quarter’s money is all spent, and she can’t possibly manage without a new mantle for Sunday,” returned Julietta.

“I can’t supply it; you know I can’t. I am not able to pay my own way now. Let her write to Mrs. Cramp.”

“It would be of no use, mamma. Aunt Mary Ann will never help us to clothes. She says we have had too many of them.”

“Well, I don’t want to be worried with these matters: it’s enough for me to think of poor Valentine’s things. Only two days now before he starts. And what wretched weather it is!”

“Valentine says he shall not take much luggage with him. He saw me counting his shirts, and he said they were too many by half.”

“And who will supply him with shirts out there, do you suppose?” demanded Mrs. Chandler. “You talk nothing but nonsense, Julietta. Where is Valentine? He ought to be here, with all this packing to do. He must have been gone out these two hours.”

“He said he had business at Islip.”

Mrs. Chandler looked gloomy at the answer. She hated the very name of Islip: partly because they held no longer any part in the place, partly because the Bell was in it.

But Valentine had not gone to the Bell this time. His visit was to his cousin Tom; and his errand was to beg of Tom to give or lend him a fifty-pound note before sailing.

“I shall have next to nothing in my pocket, Tom, when I land,” he urged, as the two sat together in Tom’s private room. “If I get on over there, I will pay you back. If I don’t—well, perhaps you won’t grudge having helped me for the last time.”

For a moment Tom did not answer. He sat before his desk-table, Valentine near him: just as Valentine had one day sat at his desk in his private room, and Tom had been the petitioner, not so many years gone by. Valentine looked upon the silence as an ill-omen.

“You have all the business that once was mine in your fingers now, Tom. It has left me for you.”

“But not by any wish or seeking of mine, Valentine; you know that,” spoke Tom readily, turning his honest eyes and kindly face on the fallen man. “I wish you were in your office still. There’s plenty of work for both of us.”

“Well, I am not in it; and you have got it all. You might lend me such a poor little sum as fifty pounds.”

“Of course I mean to lend it: but I was thinking. Look here, Valentine. I will not give it you now; you cannot want it before sailing: and you might lose it on board,” he added laughing. “You shall carry with you an order upon my brother George for one hundred pounds.”

“Will George pay it?”

“I will take care of that. He shall receive a letter from me by the same mail that takes you out. Stay, Valentine. I will give you the order now.”

He wrote what was necessary, sealed it up, and handed it over. Valentine thanked him.

“How is Emma?” he asked as he rose. “And the boy?”

“Quite well, thank you: both. Will you not go in and see them?”

“I think not. You can say good-bye for me. I don’t much care to trouble people.”

“God bless you, Valentine,” said Tom, clasping his hand. “You will begin life anew over there, and may have a happy one yet. One of these days you will be coming back to us, a prosperous man.”

Valentine went trudging home through the rain, miserable and dispirited, and found a visitor had arrived—Mrs. Cramp. His mother and sister were upstairs then, busy over his trunks; so Mrs. Cramp had him all to herself. She had liked Valentine very much. When he went wrong, it put her out frightfully, and since then she had not spared him: which of course put out Valentine.

“Yes, it will be a change,” he acknowledged, in reply to a remark of hers. “A flourishing solicitor here, and a servant there. For that’s what I shall be over yonder, I conclude; I can’t expect to be my own master. You don’t know how good the business was, Aunt Mary Ann, at the time my father died. If I could only have kept it!”

“You could not expect to keep it,” said Mrs. Cramp, who sat facing him, her bonnet tilted back from her red and comely face, her purple stuff gown pulled up above her boots.

“I should have kept it, but for now and then taking a little drop too much,” confessed poor Valentine: who was deeper in the dumps that day than he had ever been before.

“I don’t know that,” said Mrs. Cramp. “The business was a usurped one.”

“A what?” said Valentine.

“There is an overruling Power above us, you know,” she went on. “I am quite sure, Valentine—I have learnt it by experience—that injustice never answers in the long run. It may seem to succeed for a time; but it does not last: it cannot and it does not. If a man rears himself on another’s downfall, causing himself that downfall that he may rise, his prosperity rests on no sure foundation. In some way or other the past comes home to him; and he suffers for it, if not in his own person, in that of his children. Ill-gotten riches bring a curse, never a blessing.”

“What a growler you are, Aunt Mary Ann!”

“I don’t mean it for growling, Valentine. It is true.”

“It’s not true.”

“Not true! The longer I live the more examples I see of it. A man treads another down that he may rise himself: and there he stands high and flourishing. But wait a few years, and look then. He is gone. Gone, and no trace of his prosperity left. And when I mark that, I recall that verse in the Psalms of David: ‘I went by, and lo, he was gone: I sought him, but his place was nowhere to be found.’ That verse is a true type of real life, Valentine.”

“I don’t believe it,” cried Valentine. “And where’s the good of having the Psalms at your finger-ends?”

“You do believe it. Why, Valentine, take your own case. Was there ever a closer exemplification? Tom was injured; put down; I may say, crushed by you and your father. Yes, crushed: crushed out of his rights. His father made the business; and the half of it, at any rate, ought to have been Tom’s. Instead of that, your father deposed him and usurped it. He repented when he was dying, and charged you to remedy the wrong. But you did not; you usurped it. And what has it ended in?”

“Ended in?” cried Valentine vacantly.

“You are—as you are; ruined in character, in purse, in reputation; and Tom is respected and flourishing. The business has left you and gone to him; not through any seeking of his, but through your own doings entirely; the very self-same business that his father made has in the natural course of time and events gone back to him—and he is not thirty yet. It is retribution, nephew. Justice has been righting herself; and man could neither stay nor hinder it.”

“What nonsense!” debated Valentine testily. “Suppose I had been steady: would the business have left me for Tom then?”

“Yes. In some inscrutable way, that we see not, it would. I am sure of it. You would no more have been allowed to triumph to the end on your ill-gotten gains, than I could stand if I went out and perched myself on yonder weathercock,” affirmed Mrs. Cramp, growing warm. “Your father kept his place, it is true; but what a miserable man he always was, and without any ostensible cause.”

“I wonder you don’t set up for a parson, Aunt Mary Ann! This is as good as a sermon.”

“Then carry the sermon in your memory through life, Valentine. Our doings, whether they be good or ill, bring back their fruits. In some wonderful manner that we cannot understand, events are always shaping onwards their own true ends, their appointed destiny, and working out the will of Heaven.”

That’s all. And the Squire seemed to take a leaf out of Mrs. Cramp’s book. For ever so long afterwards, he would tell us to read a lesson from the history of the Chandlers, and to remember that none can deal unjustly in the sight of God without having to account for it sooner or later.