an lot on the
male side, my grandfather was a draper in a large way of business, my
father was a coal-merchant who made a great fortune. His brother, my
uncle, in whom my father always believed implicitly, took to what is
called Finance, and when my father died he left me, his only child,
in his guardianship. Until I am five and twenty I cannot even marry or
touch a halfpenny without his consent; in fact if I should marry against
his will the most of my money goes to him."

"I expect that he has got it already," said Alan.

"No, I think not. I found out that, although it is not mine, it is not
his. He can't draw it without my signature, and I steadily refuse to
sign anything. Again and again they have brought me documents, and I
have always said that I would consider them at five and twenty, when
I came of age under my father's will. I went on the sly to a lawyer
in Kingswell and paid him a guinea for his advice, and he put me up to
that. 'Sign nothing,' he said, and I have signed nothing, so, except by
forgery nothing can have gone. Still for all that it may have gone.
For anything I know I am not worth more than the clothes I stand in,
although my father was a very rich man."

"If so, we are about in the same boat, Barbara," Alan answered with a
laugh, "for my present possessions are Yarleys, which brings in about
L100 a year less than the interest on its mortgages and cost of upkeep,
and the L1700 that Aylward paid me back on Friday for my shares. If I
had stuck to them I understand that in a week or two I should have been
worth L100,000, and now you see, here I am, over thirty years of age
without a profession, invalided out of the army and having failed in
finance, a mere bit of driftwood without hope and without a trade."

Barbara's brown eyes grew soft with sympathy, or was it tears?

"You are a curious creature, Alan," she said. "Why didn't you take the
L17,000 for that fetish of yours? It would have been a fair deal and
have set you on your legs."

"I don't know," he answered dejectedly. "It went against the grain, so
what is the use of talking about it? I think my old uncle Austin told
me it wasn't to be parted with--no, perhaps it was Jeekie. Bother the
Yellow God! it is always cropping up."

"Yes," replied Barbara, "the Yellow God is always cropping up,
especially in this neighbourhood."

They walked on a while in silence, till suddenly Barbara sat down upon a
bole of felled oak and began to cry.