he boy, Rosewarne. I can tie up the estate on the boy."

Martin Rosewarne smiled. "Your brother's is a good boy," he said.
"You can tie up the money with him. Or you may make me steward, and I'll
give you my word he shall not be ousted."

Eustatius, first Lord Killiow, died in 1822, and his brother, Patrick
Henry, succeeded to the title and estates. Martin Rosewarne retained his
stewardship. To be sure he made an obliging steward. He saw that the man
must go his own gait, and also that he was drinking himself to death.
So where a timid treasurer would have closed the purse-strings, he
unloosed them. He cut down timber, he raised mortgages as soon as asked--
all to hasten the end. Thus encouraged, the second Lord Killiow ran his
constitution to a standstill, and succumbed in 1832. The heir was at that
time an undergraduate at Christchurch, Oxford, and already the author of a
treatise of one hundred and fifty pages on _The Limits of the Human
Intelligence_. On leaving the University he put on a white hat and buff
waistcoat, and made violent speeches against the Reform Bill. Later, he
sobered down into a 'philosophic' Radical; became Commissioner of Works;
married an actress in London, Polly Wilkins by name; and died a year
later, in 1850, at Rome, of malarial fever, leaving no heir.
Lady Killiow--whom we shall meet--buried him decently, and returned to
spend the rest of her days in seclusion at Damelioc, committing all
business to her steward, John Rosewarne.

For Martin Rosewarne had taken to wife in 1814 a yeoman's daughter from
the Meneage district, west of Falmouth, and the issue of that marriage was
a daughter, who grew up to marry a ship's captain, against her parents'
wishes, and a son, John, whom his father had set himself to train in his
own ideas of business.

In intellect the boy inherited his father's strength, if something less
than his originality. But in temper, as well as in size of frame and
limb, he threatened at first to be a throw-back to Nicholas, his
great-grandfather of evil memory. All that his father could teach he
learnt aptly. But his passions were his own, and from fifteen to eighteen
a devil seemed to possess the lad. He had no sooner mastered the banking
business than he flatly refused to cross the bank's threshold. For two
years he dissipated all his early promise in hunting, horse-breaking,
wrestling at fairs, prize-fighting, drinking, gaming, sparking.
Then, on a day aft