it."

"Dick, you have not been mad enough to cut off the head of your own
family--your own flesh and blood, as it might be--to leave the few
thousands you own, to this mad adventurer in Scotland!"

Bluewater smiled at this evidence of the familiarity of his friend with
his own way of thinking and feeling; and, for a single instant, he
regretted that he had not put his first intention in force, in order
that the conformity of views might have been still more perfect; but,
putting a hand in his pocket he drew out the document itself, and
leaning forward, gave it carelessly to Sir Gervaise.

"There is the will; and by looking it over, you will know what I've
done," he said. "I wish you would keep it; for, if 'misery makes us
acquainted with strange bed-fellows,' revolutions reduce us, often, to
strange plights, and the paper will be safer with you than with me. Of
course, you will keep my secret, until the proper time to reveal it
shall arrive."

The vice-admiral, who knew that he had no direct interest in his
friend's disposition of his property, took the will, with a good deal of
curiosity to ascertain its provisions. So short a testament was soon
read; and his eye rested intently on the paper until it had taken in the
last word. Then his hand dropped, and he regarded Bluewater with a
surprise he neither affected, nor wished to conceal. He did not doubt
his friend's sanity, but he greatly questioned his discretion.

"This is a very simple, but a very ingenious arrangement, to disturb the
order of society," he said; "and to convert a very modest and
unpretending, though lovely girl, into a forward and airs-taking old
woman! What is this Mildred Dutton to you, that you should bequeath to
her L30,000?"

"She is one of the meekest, most ingenuous, purest, and loveliest, of
her meek, ingenuous, pure, and lovely sex, crushed to the earth by the
curse of a brutal, drunken father; and, I am resolute to see that this
world, for once, afford some compensation for its own miseries."

"Never doubt that, Richard Bluewater; never doubt _that_. So certain is
vice, or crime, to bring its own punishment in this life, that one may
well question if any other hell is needed. And, depend on it, your meek,
modest ingenuousness, in its turn, will not go unrewarded."

"Quite true, so far as the spirit is concerned; but, I mean to provide a
little for the comfort of the body. You remember Agnes Hedworth, I take
it for granted?"

"Reme