He gave me the sheet he had begun with "Dear Mother," and went on
dictating. It was not at all after Julius Caesar's fashion of
dictating. He sat with his eyes on his own letter, and uttered one
brief but ponderous sentence after another, each complete in all its
parts, and quite unhesitating, though slowly uttered. I gathered it
up, wrote it down, said "Well," and waited for more in silence, till,
after I had looked at him once or twice to see whether he were asleep
or in a reverie, another such sentence followed, and I began to know
him very much better.

After saying "My hands have been lamed for a few days, and my aunt is
so good as to write for me," he went on to say, in forcible and not
very affectionate terms, that "Smith must not think of coming home;
Eustace could do nothing for him there, but as long as the family
remained at Nelson their allowance should be increased by one hundred
pounds a year." I filled up an order, which he signed on a Sydney bank
for the first quarter. "It must not be more," he said, as he told me
the sum, "or they will be taking their passage with it."

"No more?" I asked, when he prepared to conclude this short letter.

"No. Smith reads all her letters."

"That is very hard on you."

"She meant to do well for me, but it was a great mistake. If Smith
comes home to prey upon Eustace, it will be a bad business."

"But he has no claim on Eustace, whatever he may think he has on you."

"He is more likely to come now. He knows he can get nothing out of
me--" Then, as I looked at the order, he added, "Beyond my mother's
rights. Poor mother!"

I found that the schoolmaster had been induced to marry Alice Alison in
the expectation that her share in the proceeds of Boola Boola would be
much larger than it proved to be. He had fawned on the two Eustaces,
and obtained all he could from the elder, but, going too far at last,
had been detected by the Sydney bank in what amounted to an
embezzlement. Prosecution was waived, and he was assisted to leave
Australia and make a fresh start in New Zealand, whence he had never
ceased to endeavour to gain whatever he could from Boola Boola. He
could twist Eustace round his finger, and Harold, though loathing and
despising him, would do anything for his mother, but was resolved, for
Eustace's sake, to keep them at a distance, as could only be done by
never allowing them a sufficient sum at once to obtain a passage home,
and he knew the habi