work so well, Tom," he said softly.

"Mastering it, uncle!" said Tom, with an uneasy feeling of doubt raised
by his relative's look. "I--I'm afraid I am getting on very slowly."

"But you can find time to idle and hinder my clerk."

"He had only just come in, uncle, and--"

"That will do, sir," said the lawyer, with the smile now gone. "I've
told you more than once, sir, that you were a fool, and now I repeat it.
You'll never make a lawyer. Your thick, dense brain has only one
thought in it, and that is how you can idle and shirk the duty that I
for your mother's sake have placed in your way. What do you expect,
sir?--that I am going to let you loaf about my office, infecting those
about you, and trying to teach your cousin your lazy ways? I don't know
what I could have been thinking about to take charge of such a great
idle, careless fellow."

"Not careless, uncle," pleaded the lad. "I do try, but it is so hard."

"Silence, sir! Try!--not you. I meant to do my duty by you, and in due
time to impoverish myself by paying for your articles--nearly a hundred
pounds, sir. But don't expect it. I'm not going to waste my
hard-earned savings upon a worthless, idle fellow. Lawyer! Pish!
You're about fit for a shoeblack, sir, or a carter. You'll grow into as
great an idiot as your father was before you. What my poor sister could
have seen in him I don't--"

_Bang_!

CHAPTER TWO.

The loudly-closed door of the private office cut short Mr James
Brandon's speech, and he had passed out without looking round, or he
would have seen that his nephew looked anything but a fool as he sat
there with his fists clenched and his eyes flashing.

"How dare he call my dear dead father an idiot!" he said in a low fierce
voice through his compressed teeth. "Oh, I can't bear it--I won't bear
it. If I were not such a miserable coward I should go off and be a
soldier, or a sailor, or anything so that I could be free, and not
dependent on him. I'll go. I must go. I cannot bear it," he muttered;
and then with a feeling of misery and despair rapidly increasing, he
bent down over his book again, for a something within him seemed to
whisper--"It would be far more cowardly to give up and go."

Then came again the memory of his mother's words, and he drew his breath
through his teeth as if he were in bodily as well as mental pain; and
forcing himself to read, he went on studying the dreary law-book till,
in his efforts to