he took a tutor for him and
sent him abroad.

Louis and the tutor got as far as Berlin, with what mutual
satisfaction to each other need not be specially described. But from
Berlin Sir Roger received a letter in which the tutor declined to go
any further in the task which he had undertaken. He found that he
had no influence over his pupil, and he could not reconcile it to
his conscience to be the spectator of such a life as that which Mr
Scatcherd led. He had no power in inducing Mr Scatcherd to leave
Berlin; but he would remain there himself till he should hear from
Sir Roger. So Sir Roger had to leave the huge Government works which
he was then erecting on the southern coast, and hurry off to Berlin
to see what could be done with young Hopeful.

The young Hopeful was by no means a fool; and in some matters was
more than a match for his father. Sir Roger, in his anger, threatened
to cast him off without a shilling. Louis, with mixed penitence and
effrontery, reminded him that he could not change the descent of the
title; promised amendment; declared that he had done only as do other
young men of fortune; and hinted that the tutor was a strait-laced
ass. The father and the son returned together to Boxall Hill, and
three months afterwards Mr Scatcherd set up for himself in London.

And now his life, if not more virtuous, was more crafty than it had
been. He had no tutor to watch his doings and complain of them, and
he had sufficient sense to keep himself from absolute pecuniary ruin.
He lived, it is true, where sharpers and blacklegs had too often
opportunities of plucking him; but, young as he was, he had been
sufficiently long about the world to take care he was not openly
robbed; and as he was not openly robbed, his father, in a certain
sense, was proud of him.

Tidings, however, came--came at least in those last days--which cut
Sir Roger to the quick; tidings of vice in the son which the father
could not but attribute to his own example. Twice the mother was
called up to the sick-bed of her only child, while he lay raving in
that horrid madness by which the outraged mind avenges itself on the
body! Twice he was found raging in delirium tremens, and twice the
father was told that a continuance of such life must end in an early
death.

It may easily be conceived that Sir Roger was not a happy man. Lying
there with that brandy bottle beneath his pillow, reflecting in his
moments of rest that that son of his had