ht's work for you; I'm going to leave all my property to my cousin
Nick, my bitterest enemy, and a lawsuit with it that'll break his
heart. There's fun for the lawyers,--eh, my boy!"

So talking, the old man strode firmly forth, with a bitter, malignant
scowl on his flushed face. The lawyer followed him, and, when they were
in the street, Hawker again asked him to come to the inn and make his
will for him.

"I'll stay by you, Hawker, and see that you don't make a fool of
yourself. I wish you would not be so vindictive. It's indecent; you'll
be ashamed of it tomorrow; but, in the meantime, it's indecent."

"Ha, ha!" laughed Hawker; "how quietly he talks! One can see that he
hasn't had a bastard child fathered on him by a gipsy hag. Come along,
old fellow; there's fifty pounds' worth of work for you this week, if I
only live through it!"

He took the lawyer to the inn, and they got dinner. Hawker ate but
little, for him, but drank a good deal. Dickson thought he was getting
drunk; but when dinner was over, and Hawker had ordered in
spirits-and-water, he seemed sober enough again.

"Now, Mr. Dickson," said he, "I am going to make a fresh will to-morrow
morning, and I shall want you to draw it up for me. After that I want
you to come home with me and transact business. You will do a good
day's work, I promise you. You seem to me now to be the only man in the
world I can trust. I pray you don't desert me."

"As I said before," replied the lawyer, "I won't desert you; but listen
to me. I don't half like the sudden way you have turned against your
own son. Why don't you pay this money, and save the disgrace of that
unhappy young man? I don't say anything about your disinheriting
him--that's no business of mine--but don't be witness against him. The
bank, or rather my Lord C----, has been very kind about it. Take
advantage of their kindness and hush the matter up."

"I know you ain't in the pay of the bank," said Hawker, "so I won't
charge you with it. I know you better than to think you'd lend yourself
to anything so mean; but your conduct looks suspicious. If you hadn't
done me a few disinterested kindnesses lately, I should say that they'd
paid you to persuade me to stop this, so as they might get their money
back, and save the cost of a prosecution. But I ain't so far gone as to
believe that; and so I tell you, as one man to another, that if you'd
come suddenly on such a mine of treason and conspiracy as I have this