nnot conceive how the poor
Silts go on in that great house. Whatever she intended, it could not
have been that. The house, the farm, the money,--everything down to the
personal articles that belong to Mr. Failing, and should have reverted
to his family!"

"It's legal. Interstate succession."

"I do not dispute it. But it is a lesson to one to make a will. Mrs.
Keynes and myself were electrified."

"They'll do there. They offered me the agency, but--" He looked down
the cultivated slopes. His manners were growing rough, for he saw few
gentlemen now, and he was either incoherent or else alarmingly direct.
"However, if Lawrie Silt's a Cockney like his father, and if my next is
a boy and like me--" A shy beautiful look came into his eyes, and passed
unnoticed. "They'll do," he repeated. "They turned out Wilbraham and
built new cottages, and bridged the railway, and made other necessary
alterations." There was a moment's silence.

Mr. Pembroke took out his watch. "I wonder if I might have the trap? I
mustn't miss my train, must I? It is good of you to have granted me an
interview. It is all quite plain?"

"Yes."

"A case of half and half-division of profits."

"Half and half?" said the young farmer slowly. "What do you take me for?
Half and half, when I provide ten of the stories and you only four?"

"I--I--" stammered Mr. Pembroke.

"I consider you did me over the long story, and I'm damned if you do me
over the short ones!"

"Hush! if you please, hush!--if only for your little girl's sake."

He lifted a clerical palm.

"You did me," his voice drove, "and all the thirty-nine Articles won't
stop me saying so. That long story was meant to be mine. I got it
written. You've done me out of every penny it fetched. It's dedicated to
me--flat out--and you even crossed out the dedication and tidied me out
of the introduction. Listen to me, Pembroke. You've done people all your
life--I think without knowing it, but that won't comfort us. A wretched
devil at your school once wrote to me, and he'd been done. Sham food,
sham religion, sham straight talks--and when he broke down, you said it
was the world in miniature." He snatched at him roughly. "But I'll show
you the world." He twisted him round like a baby, and through the open
door they saw only the quiet valley, but in it a rivulet that would
in time bring its waters to the sea. "Look even at that--and up behind
where the Plain begins and you get on the solid chalk--