Huss died suddenly in the night before the day appointed for torture, the same kind of disappointment would have been felt by the judges. Nor was there so much consolation as might be at first supposed, in the thought that her prey had been cut off in all his sins. Some, no doubt. She would have preferred to think that he was alive still and in prison, clad in convict garb, fed on convict fare, doing convict work. A hard, revengeful woman. CHAPTER VIII. HOW THE PARTNERS MADE A PROPOSAL. THEY began by advertising. That was the only thing to do. They advertised everywhere in newspapers; outside police-stations-side by side with the proclamations of a hundred pounds reward for the discovery of murderers; on hoardings, wherever the eye of passer-by might be caught. For there was one slender chance. Alison told how her father had left her in the morning distrait, troubled about something. What could he be troubled about? Everything had gone well with him; his business interests were flourishing; his investments were sound; he had no annoyances, unless it was that caused by his visitor: he was at peace with the only member of the family who had ever troubled him. The partners whispered a word to each other; their wives and daughters whispered it to Alison. Sudden madness. Such a thing was unknown in the Hamblin family, but not unknown in the history of humanity. Such a thing was possible. It was almost the only explanation possible, except that of death. Anthony Hamblin might have been robbed and murdered. That crime, also, is unhappily not unknown, but rare in London: he could not have been robbed and shut up. Therefore he was either dead or insane. In a story told by one of our best English novelists, a man, formerly the skipper of a ship, loses his reason, but retains his sailor instinct, and ships himself before the mast as an able seaman. This story came back to Alison's mind, and she dwelt upon it. "He left me," she said to Gilbert Yorke, "my poor dear left me trying to look cheerful: but he was not. He was troubled in his mind. Painful recollections of things long since forgotten had been revived in his mind. He could not sleep that night after our party; he could not take his breakfast; he was uncertain in his manner, and went backward and forward. Gilbert, I am sure that he is not dead, but living-some where, with his poor brain full of some dreadful hallucination." "It may be, Alison," said Gilbert, willing to encourage her. "It may be so, but then you must consider how we have advertised him, how minutely we have described him, and how the papers have talked about it. Why, I should say that half the people in this country know that Mr. Anthony Hamblin is missing, and what he is like. The partners began by offering a reward of one hundred pounds; now they have made it a thousand. Why, what a chance for a man who thinks he recognizes the missing man in a stranger!" Then," said Alison, "he must be somewhere among the other half, the people who have never heard of him. Gilbert, do not discourage me," she went on, her deep eyes filling with tears. "To think that he is not dead, but living; to dream at night that his step may be upon the road near the house; that he is coming back to us all again—it fills me with comfort and hope: but to think otherwise would-oh! I must think that he is living. When they brought home the coat of Joseph to his father, Jacob rent his clothes and mourned. Yet Joseph was not dead, and presently he was restored to his father and his brethren. O Gilbert, some day my father will wake up from his madness, and come back to us all in his right mind." This speculation found no favor with Stephen. His brother was dead. That was a fact which admitted of no doubt. Certainly, the silence which followed the advertisements boded little hope for Alison's theory. There was hardly any attempt at response. Here and there a letter came, mostly ill spelt and ill written, stating that the writer knew such a man as was described, namely, with long brown beard, of whom he knew nothing else. There was that single fact of a beard-could he be the missing Anthony Hamblin? And, if so, the advertisers would bear in mind the claim of the writer to the reward. But this sort of clew led to nothing. Either, then, Anthony Hamblin was dead, or he was living, as Alison suggested, among that half of the English people who had not even heard of his disappearance. Again, a gentleman, who dated from a public-house in the High Street of Islington, wrote once offering confidently to produce Mr. Anthony Hamblin, if the advertisers would first advance ten pounds for preliminary expenses, leaving the rest of the reward open until the restoration of the missing gentleman. And another worthy wrote, calling himself the representative and guardian of a boy, whose father was Anthony Hamblin. This philanthropist, on being interviewed by a clerk from the solicitor's office, first offered to square the claim for fifty pounds down, and then, being threatened quire by courtesy, with never a title to your with conspiracy, abruptly bolted. back. At last, Alison consented to put on the garb of mourning. But it was in deference to the wishes of her cousins. For herself she would have preferred to continue in the belief that the missing man was not dead but living, and would return some day and ere long to his daughter's arms. Stephen, naturally, remained in the house. That course suited him perfectly-first, because he was short of ready money, and free quarters meant great economy; secondly, because the free quarters were excellent, meaning wine of the very noblest crus, cigars of the finest brands, and a really noble cook; thirdly, because it gave him an opportunity of producing a favorable impression on Alison, which might eventually be useful; and, lastly, for a purpose of his own, which was conceived later on, by whisper of the devil, and which rapidly grew upon him and became an overmastering passion. He was not a lady's man, He was not altogether at his ease with his cousin Flora Cridland and his niece Alison. He rejoiced, therefore, when he found that they preferred an early dinner with the boy, and allowed him to dine alone in the study. The breakfast-hour, again, was early. He would breakfast in the study. After breakfast he inquired ceremoniously after the health of his niece, whom he seldom saw. He interfered with none of the arrangements of the house; went to town every day after breakfast, came back most days to dine by himself, and after dinner either read a French novel or put up his feet, smoked cigars, drank brandy-and-soda, and reflected. The quarters were so good that he had not the least intention of turning out. If he met Alison in the house, he was gravely deferential, sympathetic, but not obtrusive; if he met his cousin, Flora Cridland, he was more sprightly, but kind and thoughtful; if he met the boy, he would pat his cheek gently, and ask, with a sigh of real feeling, how he was getting on with his Latin verses. He gave no trouble, assumed no air of command, and gained every kind of credit, solely because he did nothing. And, really, when one considers how reputations are made, whether by statesmen, governors of provinces, able editors, or original dramatists, one is inclined to think that the art of doing nothing has hitherto been most extensively practiced and most grossly underrated. Had you, dear reader, never done anything except follow in a groove, you would doubtless have been ere now F. R. S., C. B., C. M. G., K. C. B., K. C. M. G., and perhaps a baronet. Whereas, in consequence of your perpetual activity, you are now no better than myself, plain Mister, le sieur, Es Stephen's courteous and considerate demeanor was due mainly to a grievous doubt which constantly afflicted and possessed him. Panurge was not a greater martyr to a doubt than Stephen Hamblin. Consider his position. He had been for nearly twenty years dependent on his brother. Anthony never offered to make him any allowance. He seemed perfectly to realize that Stephen's pretense at business, financing or broking, was only the shallowest form; and there was the understanding between them that when Stephen wanted any money he was to write for it, or call for it, and have it. Only one man, Mr. Billiter, the family solicitor, knew of those loans, though the partners suspected them. Anthony being dead, who was going to have the honor of maintaining Stephen? There was absolutely no form of labor by which he could earn his daily bread; there was none by which he meant to try. He called himself an indigo-broker, but he had done that for twenty years and more. He sometimes dabbled in small financing schemes with his cousin Alderney Codd, but that would not do for a permanent prop. And his private account in the bank was next to nothing. The great doubt, therefore, was, how Anthony had disposed of his property by testament. And really, considering everything, Stephen seems justified in being anxious. He might have satisfied himself upon the point by the simple means of calling at the solicitor's office. There were reasons, however, why he hesitated. In the first place, there were associations of an extremely disagreeable character connected with the one room in that firm's offices into which he was always shown. It was the room of the senior partner, Mr. Billiter. Stephen, although now in his forty-fifth year, was afraid of that old man. It had been Mr. Billiter's duty to confer with him in connection with a good many episodes of his career which he was desirous of forgetting. Now, Mr. Billiter, a man with old-fashioned notions about repentance, had an unpleasant way of recalling these little matters. Again, Mr. Billiter was the only man who knew the secret which Stephen and Anthony kept between themselves—the fact of Stephen's absolute dependence on the elder brother. At first he thought that he might be dispossessed from his self-constituted post of guardian, in favor of one of the cousins, presumably Augustus or William Hamblin, appointed by the will. But time passed on, and no such intima tion was sent to him. Had, then, Anthony actually appointed him the guardian of his daughter? It seemed incredible, considering the history of the past. And yet he was Anthony's only brother. And even if he were appointed guardian, there was the anxiety about the future. What provision, if any, had his brother made for him? Surely some; otherwise he would have literally to beg his daily bread of his niece. The facts might be presented, he thought, in graceful, pathetic, and attractive form. But influences might be brought to bear on the girl, against which he would be powerless. There were his cousins, the partners; they were not friendly. There was that young fellow Yorke, always about the place, no doubt anxious to hang up his hat in the house and marry the heiress. Of course Alison's husband would not desire to diminish his wife's income by a permanent charge. Yet how could he live under eight hundred a year, or so? Why, his dinners cost him three hundred a year, at least. Anthony had never counted what he bestowed; or, if he did practice that meanness, had the grace to hide it. How should he persuade Alison that nothing under a thousand a year would adequately represent his brother's affection? And what if the will contained a provision ridiculously small? He wrestled with these doubts for six weeks and more. During that time the advertising went on; and they all kept up some show of pretense that perhaps Anthony would return unexpectedly, recovered from that hallucination in which Alison believed so firmly. One day, however, Stephen received a letter from Mr. Billiter, the family solicitor, officially and stiffly worded, requesting the honor of an interview at a stated time. Mr. Billiter, who perhaps knew more family secrets than any other man of his profession in London, was not, as we have said, popular among the prodigal sons with whose career he was acquainted. He had a great, a profound dislike for scattering, wasting, idleness, and debauchery of all kinds, being himself a man of great common sense, holding a just view of the proportion of things, and incapable, at all times in his life, of being allured by the imaginary pleasures of riot. Having this dislike to the doings of Comus, he showed it in a certain contemptuous treatment of those prodigals who came to him to know the intentions of the family; and whether he gave them a check, or told them they were to be pitchforked into some unfortunate colony with a ten-pound note, or announced another act of forgiveness, he put the facts so plainly that the youth, whether repentant or not, went away with a sense of humiliation and shame very disagreeable to a high-toned, whole-souled prodigal. He held Stephen Hamblin in especial dislike, as a prodigal of five-and-twenty years' standing, which was really extending the rope beyond all precedent. Stephen was irreclaimable. It was hard to look on, and see the waste of so much money on so bad a subject. He was in appearance a shriveled-up man, between sixty and seventy years of age; a thin, small man, with gray hair, still strong, and thick, pointed chin, keen bright eyes, and a sharp nose. He received Stephen without offering to shake hands with him, coolly nodding, and going on with the papers before him. Stephen took a chair by the fire, and waited. Presently the old man jerked his head sideways, and said, without taking the trouble to look at his visitor: "This is a bad business for you, Stephen. What do you propose to do?" There was a twinkle in his eye, caught by Stephen, which seemed to mean that, the worse the business turned out, the better he would be pleased. Then he pushed away his papers, leaned back in his wooden chair, with his elbows on the arms, and looked round. "That depends upon my brother's testamentary dispositions," said Stephen, reading the twinkle in that sense, and tentatively. "I am coming to that presently. Meantime, you see, you are left without any resources at all. And to work you are ashamed.” Stephen laughed. He was resolved on keeping his temper if possible. "Can I dig?" he asked, "or shall I beg?" "When I recall," continued this disagreeable old man, "the various occasions on which you and I have conversed in this office-" "Thank you." Stephen made an impatient gesture; "I have not the least wish to be reminded of them again. Great Heavens ! is it impossible for you to forget those old schoolboy scrapes?" Quite," replied Mr. Billiter; "unless the schoolboy repents and reforms. Of repentance I have as yet seen no trace. I fear you have never experienced that salutary discipline." "If I had, you would not have heard of it," said Stephen, his face growing dark. "Nay, nay; I should have had ocular demonstration. We know the tree by its fruits." This was an unpromising beginning. The lawyer, doubtless for some reason of his own, went on to recall in detail, one after the other, the whole of his previous interviews with his visitor. When he had quite finished, Stephen's face wore an expression of wrath suppressed with difficulty, which would have delighted his enemies. "I believe," he said at last, "that I have now reminded you of everything that has previously passed between us. If I have omitted any important point, it is from no desire to spare your feelings." "You have put the case plainly. It is a perfectly correct statement, and the situation has been before my eyes for six weeks. Now for your proposal." “Of course my statement of the facts is per 'That I can quite believe," said Stephen, with fectly correct. Remember, then, your position." a ghastly grin. "But from forgetfulness. I am growing old, and some of the details may have escaped my memory." "So much the better," said Stephen. 'All this, however," the old man went on, “is a preamble. I am now coming to the real business of the day. I asked you to call upon me because-” "I thought," said Stephen, "you were going to confine yourself to the pleasure of reviving the business of the past. That is a part of our interview which has always afforded you so much gratification." "Not at all, Stephen, not at all. I merely sketched out some of the past because it is as well that men should know sometimes the light in which others regard their actions. Fortunately for you, I am the only man in possession of all the facts. Yet the partners in the house know some of them." "Would you mind proceeding straight to the point?" Stephen cried, impatiently. "I am doing so." Here Mr. Billiter pushed back his chair and rose. A standing position gives one a certain advantage-stature has nothing to do with it. "Do you think, Stephen Hamblin," he asked, shaking a judicial forefinger, "that a man of your antecedents is a fit person to be the guardian of a young lady?" "Do you mean that I shall rob her, or ill treat her, or beat her with a stick, or murder her, then?" "That is not an answer to my question, which is, are you a proper person for such a charge?" "I really think that I am not called upon to answer that question." "You will see directly why I put it. I only want you to acknowledge the justice of the proposal I am about to make you." "I want to know, however, what my brother's will directed." "My dear sir, the surviving partners feel so strongly in the matter, that, had his will named you as guardian and trustee, they would have opposed your appointment in open court as an unfit person for the trust; and then those facts would have come out which are better hidden." “I am much obliged to my cousins," said Stephen. "They are, and always have been, my very dear friends. I am very much obliged to them." "You ought to be, when you learn what they propose." 44 But my brother's will-what does that say? Why is it not produced?" "Because, my dear sir" (the lawyer spoke very slowly and distinctly), "your brother Anthony, in spite of his great wealth, could never be persuaded to make a will at all. He always put it off. There is no will.” "No will!" Stephen stared in amazement; "my brother made no will?" "None. There was the chance that some other firm of lawyers had drawn it up for him. We have searched his private safe at the office; we have searched his papers at Clapham—" "After I went there?" "The day after, while you were away. All business documents were removed by myself, and brought here. The papers left in his desk and drawers are nothing but old accounts, diaries, and letters. There is no will." "No will?" Stephen repeated. It was not till afterward that he waxed indignant over the want of confidence which caused the partners to remove the papers. "Oh! you are going to make a proposal? happened to him. Well, I am ready to listen." "I must remind you that you have no money and no income, that you were dependent on your brother until his death, that you have drawn upon him of late years for a very large amount-many hundreds every year-and that, unless you get something out of the estate, you will be reduced to the painful necessity of working or starving. Your cousins in the firm, as I dare say you know very well, will certainly do nothing for you." "You now understand the general situation," continued the lawyer, sitting down again, “and are prepared no doubt to meet my proposal in a favorable spirit ? " "What is your proposal?" "It is one which was suggested by Mr. Augustus Hamblin, in the first place, and put into shape by me. It is this. Miss Hamblin wants about fifteen months before she comes of age. That is a very short period of guardianship. We are willing, so as to avoid all suspicion of scandal, that you should be nominally the guardian, and that letters of administration, if they are granted at all during the minority, shall be taken out in your name. We, however, shall relieve you of all your duties. You will have nothing whatever to do with the management of the estates. You will continue to live at Clapham, if you please, and until your residence becomes distasteful to Alison; and for your trouble, whatever trouble the arrangement may cause you, we are prepared to offer you the sum of five hundred pounds. If Miss Hamblin consents, as her cousins will advise her to do, that sum will be continued afterward for your lifetime as an annual charge upon the estate, subject to good behavior." "What is good behavior?" Stephen asked, looking as amiable as an hyena. he got there, he had walked himself into a good temper. Why, what did it matter what the old man said? Five hundred a year, not so much as he had always managed to get out of Anthony, but still something; still a good round sum for a bachelor, and for a year at least the run of the fraternal cellar. Not at all bad. He sent word to Alison that he would like to see her if she was quite disengaged. "My dear," he said, taking her by the two hands-he had never called her before by any other term of endearment-"my dear, I have today been with your poor father's lawyer. They have invited me, with the concurrence of your cousins, and for the brief space which remains before you attain your majority, to act as your guardian. I hope you will not object to me." He still held her two hands, gazed sentimentally into her eyes, and went on before she had time to reply: "If you raise money upon it, or sell it, as if it were an actual annuity of your own, or dis- "We have not seen so much of each other grace yourself in any way, the allowance will be as we might have done in the old days. That stopped." was entirely my fault. My partial estrangement "Have you anything more to say?" added from you, and from the rest of the family, was Stephen, rising. "Nothing more," said the lawyer, pleasantly. "Let me see-we have recapitulated the facts, have we not?" "Oh, yes; you have raked up all the mud." "And I've given you to understand my opinion about your conduct." "Yes; you've certainly told me that." “And—and—yes, I really think that is all.” "In that case I can go, I suppose." Stephen put on his hat. "Is it not a very remarkable thing, Mr. Billiter, that at every interview I have ever had with you I should desire vehemently to kill you?" "It really is remarkable, Stephen Hamblin," answered the lawyer, with a hard smile; "it shows how admirable are our laws that you are deterred from carrying your wish into effect. -By the way, you accept the conditions, I suppose?" "Yes, I accept; of course I accept. If you had offered me a hundred a year, I must have accepted. I suppose the outside world will not know. Alison will not know, for the present." "I see no reason why any one should know. Augustus Hamblin does not talk. And, Stephen "-just as the door was closing-"what a very sad pity it is that you never could run straight! When are you going to begin repentance? Time is getting on, and the rope will be quite played out some day." my fault altogether. But your father and I were never estranged. One heart always. Perhaps I took offense because certain youthful peccadilloes were too severely visited. Perhaps I showed offense too readily, and have been forgiven with difficulty. But never mind. Those things are now like old songs. You have no fear of any more wild oats, Alison ?" "Not at all, uncle." She smiled in his face, as he held her hands. She was too young to see that the light in his eyes was unreal and the smile on his lips forced. dian. "Then that is settled. You will do what you like, go where you like, have all you wish to have. That will be my sole care as your guarThat is my idea of looking after you for the next fifteen months or so. When you come of age, you can turn me into the street, and sit down to enjoy, all the rest of your life, this wealth of your father. Happy girl! I wish I was only twenty. And I wish I was going to have, like you, a quarter of a million of money!" This part of his speech, at any rate, was sin cere. CHAPTER IX. HOW STEPHEN DREAMED A DREAM. THIS good understanding was celebrated af Stephen slammed the door and strode away, ter the English fashion. Stephen dined with the with rage tearing at his heart. He walked all the way, because he was in such a rage, to Clapham Common. By the time ladies in the evening. Nicolas was permitted to assist at this little banquet, which was, the boy observed with pleasure, the first cheerful meal |