look to come into it," replied Lionel.

"The probabilities are that you will come into it," returned John
Massingbird, more seriously than he often spoke. "Barring getting shot,
or run over by a railway train, you'll make old bones, you will. You
have never played with your constitution; I have, in more ways than one:
and in bare years I have considerably the advantage of you. Psha! when I
am a skeleton in my coffin, you'll still be a young man. You can make
your cherished alterations then."

"You may well say in more ways than one," returned Lionel, half joking,
half serious. "There's smoking among the catalogue. How many pipes do
you smoke in a day? Fifty?"

"Why didn't you say day and night? Tynn lives in perpetual torment lest
my bed should ignite some night, and burn up him, as well as Verner's
Pride. I go to sleep sometimes with my pipe in my mouth as we do at the
diggings. Now and then I feel half inclined to make a rush back there.
It suited me better than this."

Lionel bent over some papers that were before him--a hint that he had
business to do. Mr. Massingbird did not take it. He began filling his
pipe again, scattering the tobacco on the ground wholesale in the
process, and talking at the same time.

"I say, Lionel, why did old Verner leave the place away from you? Have
you ever wondered?"

Lionel glanced up at him in surprise.

"Have I ever ceased wondering, you might have said. I don't know why he
did."

"Did he never give you a reason--or an explanation?"

"Nothing of the sort. Except--yes, except a trifle. Some time after his
death, Mrs. Tynn discovered a formidable-looking packet in one of his
drawers, sealed and directed to me. She thought it was the missing
codicil; so did I, until I opened it. It proved to contain nothing but a
glove; one of my old gloves, and a few lines from my uncle. They were to
the effect that when I received the glove I should know why he
disinherited me."

"And did you know?" asked John Massingbird, applying a light to his
pipe.

"Not in the least. It left the affair more obscure, if possible, than it
had been before. I suppose I never shall know now."

"Never's a long day," cried John Massingbird. "But you told me about
this glove affair before."

"Did I? Oh, I remember. When you first returned. That is all the
explanation I have ever had."

"It was not much," said John. "Dickens take this pipe! It won't draw.
Where's my knife?"

Not finding his knife a