do as he pleases."

"You mean as to the income he has allowed me?"

"As to the income! As to the property itself. It is bad waiting for dead
men's shoes."

"And yet it is what everybody does in this world. No one can say that I
have been at all in a hurry to step into my uncle's shoes. It was he
that first told you that he should never marry, and as the property had
been entailed on me, he undertook to bring me up as his son."

"So he did."

"Not a doubt about it, sir. But I had nothing to say to it. As far as I
understand, he has been allowing me two hundred and fifty pounds a year
for the last dozen years."

"Ever since you went to the Charter-house."

"At that time I could not be expected to have a word to say to it. And
it has gone on ever since."

"Yes, it has gone on ever since."

"And when I was leaving Cambridge he required that I should not go into
a profession."

"Not exactly that, Harry."

"It was so that I understood it. He did not wish his heir to be burdened
with a profession. He said so to me himself."

"Yes, just when he was in his pride because you had got your fellowship.
But there was a contract understood, if not made."

"What contract?" asked Harry, with an air of surprise.

"That you should be to him as a son."

"I never undertook it. I wouldn't have done it at the price,--or for any
price. I never felt for him the respect or the love that were due to a
father. I did feel both of them, to the full, for my own father. They
are a sort of a thing which we cannot transfer."

"They may be shared, Harry," said the rector, who was flattered.

"No, sir; in this instance that was not possible."

"You might have sat by while he read a sermon to his sister and nieces.
You understood his vanity, and you wounded it, knowing what you were
doing. I don't mean to blame you, but it was a misfortune. Now we must
look it in the face and see what must be done. Your mother has told you
that he has written to me. There is his letter. You will see that he
writes with a fixed purpose." Then he handed to Harry a letter written
on a large sheet of paper, the reading of which would be so long that
Harry seated himself for the operation.

The letter need not here be repeated at length. It was written with
involved sentences, but in very decided language. It said nothing of
Harry's want of duty, or not attending to the sermons, or of other
deficiencies of a like nature, but based his resolution in regar