nce with
good-humour rather than with submission, not opposing him with direct
contradiction when he abused his grandson, but saying little words
to mitigate his wrath, if it were possible. At such times the Squire
would tell her that she also would learn to know her brother's
character some day. "You'll live to be robbed by him, and turned out
as naked as you were born," he said to her one day. Then Kate fired
up and declared that she fully trusted her brother's love. Whatever
faults he might have, he had been staunch to her, So she said, and
the old man sneered at her for saying so.

One morning, soon after this, when she brought him up to his bedroom
some mixture of thin porridge, which he still endeavoured to swallow
for his breakfast, he bade her sit down, and began to talk to her
about the property. "I know you are a fool," he said, "about all
matters of business;--more of a fool than even women generally are."
To this Kate acceded with a little smile,--acknowledging that her
understanding was limited. "I want to see Gogram," he said. "Do you
write to him a line, telling him to come here to-day,--he or one of
his men,--and send it at once by Peter." Gogram was an attorney who
lived at Penrith, and who was never summoned to Vavasor Hall unless
the Squire had something to say about his will. "Don't you think
you'd better put it off till you are a little stronger?" said Kate.
Whereupon the Squire fired at her such a volley of oaths that she
sprang off the chair on which she was sitting, and darted across to a
little table at which there was pen and ink, and wrote her note to Mr
Gogram, before she had recovered from the shaking which the battery
had given her. She wrote the note, and ran away with it to Peter,
and saw Peter on the pony on his way to Penrith, before she dared to
return to her grandfather's bedside.

"What should you do with the estate if I left it you?" the Squire
said to her the first moment she was again back with him.

This was a question she could not answer instantly. She stood by
his bedside for a while thinking,--holding her grandfather's hand
and looking down upon the bed. He, with his rough watery old eyes,
was gazing up into her face, as though he were trying to read her
thoughts. "I think I should give it to my brother," she said.

"Then I'm d---- if I'll leave it to you," said he.

She did not jump now, though he had sworn at her. She still stood,
holding his hand softly, and looking