on and you."

"If 'tis five pound, 'tis welcome to-day; an' if 'tis five shillin',
I'll thank un an' spend it 'pon a ring to wear for un. He was a gude
auld blid, an' I'm sorry he's gone."

"Will, Uncle's left 'e a thousand pound!"

"What! You'm jokin'."

"Solemn truth. 'Tis in mother's letter."

A rush of joy lighted up the young man's face. He said not a word; then
his eyes grew moist.

"To think as he could have loved a daft fule like me so well as that!
Me--that never done nothin'--no, not so much as to catch a dish of trout
for un, now an' again, when he was here."

"You couldn't, bein' water-keeper."

"What matter for that? I ought to have poached for un, seein' the manner
of man he was."

He kept silence for a while, then burst out--

"I'll buy the braavest marble stone can be cut. Nobody shall do it but
me, wi' doves or anchors or some such thing on it, to make it a fine
sight so long as the world goes on."

"Theer's plenty room 'pon the auld slate, for that matter," said Chris.

"Damn the auld slate! The man shall have white marble carvings, I tell
'e, if I've got to spend half the money buying 'em. He b'lieved in me;
he knawed I'd come to gude; an' I'm grateful to un."

During the evening Will was unusually silent and much busied with
thought. He knew little of the value of money, and a thousand pounds to
his mind represented possibilities wholly beyond the real power of that
sum to achieve. Chris presently visited the vicarage, and after their
supper, brother and sister sat late and discussed the days to come. When
the girl retired, Will's thoughts for a moment concerned themselves with
the immediate past rather than the future; and then it was that he
caught himself blankly before his own argument of the morning. To him
the force of the contention, now that his position was magically
changed, appeared strong as before. A little sophistry had doubtless
extricated him from this dilemma, but his nature was innocent of it, and
his face grew longer as the conclusion confronting him became more
clear. From his own logic--a mysterious abstraction, doubtless--he found
it difficult to escape without loss of self-respect. He still held that
the deed, impossible to him as a pauper, might be performed without
sacrifice of dignity or importance by a man of his present fortune. So
the muddle-headed youth saw his duty straight ahead of him; and he
regretted it heartily, but did not attempt to escape from it