in which he had almost told one of the
servants in the house to do so. But he had felt ashamed at seeming to
remember so small a thing. The owner would be there soon, probably
in an hour or two, and could stop or could continue what he pleased.
Then, as he thought of the ownership of the estate, he reflected
that, as the sale had been in truth effected by his namesake, the
money promised by his father would be legally due;--would not now be
his money. As to the estate itself, that, of course, would go to his
namesake as his father's heir. No will had been made leaving the
estate to him, and his namesake would be the heir-at-law. Thus he
would be utterly beggared. It was not that he actually believed that
this would be the case; but his thoughts were morbid, and he took an
unwholesome delight in picturing to himself circumstances in their
blackest hue. Then he would strike the ground with his stick, in his
wrath, because he thought of such things at all. How was it that he
was base enough to think of them while the accident, which had robbed
him of his father, was so recent?

As the dusk grew on, he emerged out of the copse into the park, and,
crossing at the back of the home paddocks, came out upon the road
near to Darvell's farm. He passed a few yards up the lane, till at a
turn he could discern the dismantled house. As far as he could see
through the gloom of the evening, there were no workmen near the
place. Some one, he presumed, had given directions that nothing
further should be done on a day so sad as this. He stood for awhile
looking and listening, and then turned round to enter the park again.

It might be that the new squire was already at the house, and it
would be thought that he ought not to be absent. The road from the
station to the Priory was not that on which he was standing, and
Ralph might have arrived without his knowledge. He wandered slowly
back, but, before he could turn in at the park-gate, he was met by
a man on the road. It was Mr. Walker, the farmer of Brownriggs, an
old man over seventy, who had lived on the property all his life,
succeeding his father in the same farm. Walker had known young Newton
since he had first been brought to the Priory as a boy, and could
speak to him with more freedom than perhaps any other tenant on the
estate. "Oh, Mr. Ralph," he said, "this has been a dreary thing!"
Ralph, for the first time since the accident, burst out into a flood
of tears. "No wonder you t