live be so anxious to see one
who was comparatively a stranger to him? "I am so glad you have come in
before dinner, Mr. Annesley, because my brother is so anxious to see
you, and I am afraid you'll go too early in the morning." Then he
followed her, and again found Mr. Scarborough on a couch in the same
room to which he had been first introduced.

"I've had a sharp bout of it since I saw you before," said the sick man.

"So we heard, sir."

"There is no saying how many or rather how few bouts of this kind it
will take to polish me off. But I think I am entitled to some little
respite now. The apothecary from Tretton was here this morning, and I
believe has done me just as much good as Sir William Brodrick. His
charge will be ten shillings, while Sir William demanded three hundred
pounds. But it would be mean to go out with no one but the Tretton
apothecary to look after one."

"I suppose Sir William's knowledge has been of some service."

"His dexterity with his knife has been of more. So you and Augustus have
been quarrelling about Mountjoy?"

"Not that I know of."

"He says so; and I believe his word on such a subject sooner than yours.
You are likely to quarrel without knowing it, and he is not. He thinks
that you know what has become of Mountjoy."

"Does he? Why should he think so, when I told him that I know nothing? I
tell you that I know absolutely nothing. I am ignorant whether he is
dead or alive."

"He is not dead," said the father.

"I suppose not; but I know nothing about him. Why your second son--"

"You mean my eldest according to law,--or rather my only son!"

"Why Augustus Scarborough," continued Harry Annesley, "should take upon
himself to suspect that I know aught of his brother I cannot say. He has
some cock-and-bull story about a policeman whom he professes to believe
to be ignorant of his own business. This policeman, he says, is anxious
to arrest me."

"To make you give evidence before a magistrate," said his father.

"He did not dare to tell me that he suspected me himself."

"There;--I knew you had quarrelled."

"I deny it altogether. I have not quarrelled with Augustus Scarborough.
He is welcome to his suspicions if he chooses to entertain them. I
should have liked him better if he had not brought me down to Tretton,
so as to extract from me whatever he can. I shall be more guarded in
future in speaking of Mountjoy Scarborough; but to you I give my
positive assurance, which