fty pounds a year into the bargain. Stop! and I'll pay
your debts under two or three hundred. For God's sake, let go the boy!
You shall have fifty guineas on account this minute. Let go the boy! And
your son--there, I call him your son--your son, Harry Richmond, shall
inherit from me; he shall have Riversley and the best part of my
property, if not every bit of it. Is it a bargain? Will you swear?
Don't, and the boy's a beggar, he's a stranger here as much as you. Take
him, and by the Lord, you ruin him. There now, never mind, stay, down
with him. He's got a cold already; ought to be in his bed; let the boy
down!'

'You offer me money,' Mr. Richmond answered.

'That is one of the indignities belonging to a connection with a man
like you. You would have me sell my son. To see my afflicted wife I
would forfeit my heart's yearnings for my son; your money, sir, I toss
to the winds; and I am under the necessity of informing you that I
despise and loathe you. I shrink from the thought of exposing my son to
your besotted selfish example. The boy is mine; I have him, and he shall
traverse the wilderness with me. By heaven! his destiny is brilliant. He
shall be hailed for what he is, the rightful claimant of a place among
the proudest in the land; and mark me, Mr. Beltham, obstinate sensual
old man that you are! I take the boy, and I consecrate my life to the
duty of establishing him in his proper rank and station, and there, if
you live and I live, you shall behold him and bow your grovelling pig's
head to the earth, and bemoan the day, by heaven! when you,--a common
country squire, a man of no origin, a creature with whose blood we have
mixed ours--and he is stone-blind to the honour conferred on him--when
you in your besotted stupidity threatened to disinherit Harry Richmond.'

The door slammed violently on such further speech as he had in him to
utter. He seemed at first astonished; but finding the terrified boy
about to sob, he drew a pretty box from one of his pockets and thrust
a delicious sweetmeat between the whimpering lips. Then, after some
moments of irresolution, during which he struck his chest soundingly and
gazed down, talked alternately to himself and the boy, and cast his
eyes along the windows of the house, he at last dropped on one knee
and swaddled the boy in the folds of the shawl. Raising him in a
business-like way, he settled him on an arm and stepped briskly across
gravel-walk and lawn, like a horse to