duty of property," he said; "and that I
am hardly prepared to do."

"Is there not a duty owing to your family?"

"There are a thousand duties owing to your family."

"I don't mean those you are living with merely, but those also who
transmitted the property to you. This property belongs to my family
rather than to me, and if I had had a brother it would have gone to
him: should I not do better for the family by giving it up to the next
heir? I am not disinterested in starting the question; possession and
power are of no great importance in my eyes; they are hindrances to me."

"It seems to me," said Donal, "that the fact that you would not have
succeeded had there been a son, points to the fact of a disposer of
events: you were sent into the world to take the property. If so, God
expects you to perform the duties of it; they are not to be got rid of
by throwing the thing aside, or giving them to another to do for you.
If your family and not God were the real giver of the property, the
question you put might arise; but I should hardly take interest enough
in it to be capable of discussing it. I understand my duty to my sheep
or cattle, to my master, to my father or mother, to my brother or
sister, to my pupil Davie here; I owe my ancestors love and honour, and
the keeping of their name unspotted, though that duty is forestalled by
a higher; but as to the property they leave behind them, over which
they have no more power, and which now I trust they never think about,
I do not see what obligation I can be under to them with regard to it,
other than is comprised in the duties of the property itself."

"But a family is not merely those that are gone before; there are those
that will come after!"

"The best thing for those to come after, is to receive the property
with its duties performed, with the light of righteousness radiating
from it."

"But what then do you call the duties of property?"

"In what does the property consist?"

"In land, to begin with."

"If the land were of no value, would the possession of it involve
duties?"

"I suppose not."

"In what does the value of the land consist?"

Lady Arctura did not attempt an answer to the question, and Donal,
after a little pause, resumed.

"If you valued things as the world values them, I should not care to
put the question; but I fear you may have some lingering notion that,
though God's way is the true way, the world's way must not be
disregarded. O