e often heard my mother
and my Aunt Alice tell of it. It was at the first place where we were
in New South Wales. I came running out screaming, I believe--I was old
enough to know the danger--and when they went in there was Harry
sitting on the floor, holding a snake tight by the neck and enjoying
its contortions like a new toy."

"Of course," said Harold, "if it were poisonous, which I doubt, the
danger would have been when I let go. My mother quietly bade me hold
him tight, which I suppose I had just sense enough to do, and in
another moment she had snatched up the bill-hook they had been cutting
wood with, and had his head off. She had the pluck."

I could but gasp with horror, and ask how old he was. About two! That
was clear to their minds from the place where it happened which Harold
could not recollect, though Eustace could.

"But, Harold, you surely are the eldest," I said.

"Oh no; I am six months the eldest," said Eustace, proud of his
advantage.

We were to hear more of that by-and-by.

Monday afternoon brought Mr. Prosser, who was closeted with Harold,
while Eustace and I devoted our faculties to pacifying Dora under her
exclusion, and preventing her from climbing up to the window-sill to
gaze into the library from without. She scorned submission to either
of us, so Eustace kept guard by lying on the grass below, and I coaxed
her by gathering primroses, sowing seeds, and using all inducements I
could think of, but my resources were nearly exhausted when Harold's
head appeared at the window, and he called, "Eustace! Lucy! here!"

We came at once, Dora before us.

"Come in," said Harold, admitting us at the glass door. "It is all a
mistake. I am not the man. It is Eustace. Eu, I wish you joy, old
chap--"

Mr. Prosser was at the table with a great will lying spread out on it.
"I am afraid Mr. Alison is right, Miss Alison," he said. "The property
is bequeathed to the eldest of the late Mr. Alison's grandsons born
here, not specifying by which father. If I had copied the terms of the
will I might have prevented disappointment, but I had no conception of
what he tells me."

"But Ambrose was Harold's father," I exclaimed in bewilderment, "and he
was the eldest."

"The seniority was not considered as certain," said Mr. Prosser, "and
therefore the late Mr. Alison left the property to the eldest child
born at home. 'Let us at least have an English-born heir,' I remember
he said to me."

"