our grandfather's
will. I don't wish to say aught against the dead, sir," said Ham, "but
if ever there was a cantankerous old curmudgeon on the face of this
footstool, it was Simon Darringford! That was your grandfather."

"I know," said I, nodding. "He did not like my father."

"He hated him. He made his will so that your mother, his only living
child, should not enjoy the property as long as your father lived--nor
you, either. That's a fact, Master Clint. Ye see, he put the money jest
beyond your mother's reach, and beyond your reach. He done it very
skillfully. He had the best attorneys in Massachusetts draw the will.
The courts wouldn't break it. You and your mother was doomed to poverty
as long as your father lived."

"But Ham!" I cried in amazement and pain, "couldn't my father earn money
enough to support us?"

"Not properly, sir," said Ham, in a low voice. "Not as your mother had
been used to living. Don't forget that. The Doctor was as fine a man as
ever stepped; but he wasn't a money-maker. He knowed more than any ten
doctors in this county--old Doc Eldridge is a fool to him. But your
father was easy, and he served the poor for nothing. He had ten
non-paying patients to one that paid. And he was heavily in debt, and
his debts were pressing, when he--he died."

"Ham!" I cried, leaping up again. "You--you believe there is some truth
in the story Paul hinted at?"

"Naw, I don't!" returned the coachman, promptly. "But I tell you that
there was a chance for busy-bodies to put this and that together and
make out a case of suicide. His death, my poor boy, _did_ make you and
your mother wealthy--which you'd never been, in all probability, as long
as your poor father remained alive."

I heard him with pain and with a deeper understanding of the reason for
my mother's seizure that evening. My blurting out the statement that
Paul had uttered when he was angry had undoubtedly shocked my mother
terribly. She had heard these whispers years before--when my father's
death was still an awful reality to her. What occurred in our drawing
room that evening had brought that time of trial and sorrow back to her
mind, and had resulted in the attack I have recounted. I understood it
all then--or I thought I did--and I left Ham and finally sought my bed,
determined more than ever to keep Chester Downes and his son out of the
house and make it impossible in the future for them to cause any further
trouble or misunderstanding be