y no means
sure that I don't regard it in something that fashion myself now.
However--" Nicholas cleared his throat. "Since my accident on the hunting
field I have seen no one. I had no desire to have a lot of gossipping
women and old fool men around. I hate their cackle. I left the management
of the estate to Standing, my agent. When he left--he got the offer of a
post on Lord Sinclair's estate--Spencer Curtis took his place. He had to
report to me, and I saw that he kept things going all right. He was not
an easy man to the tenants, but I did not particularly want a softling,
you understand. Last March one of the tenants--Job Grantley, you know
him--sneaked up here. It had been a vile day. He was in difficulties as
to his rent, and Curtis was putting the pressure on. He had a fancy for
squeezing those who couldn't retaliate, I suppose. Dirty hound!"

Antony made a little sound indicative of entire assent. He was becoming
interested in the recital.

"I learnt a little more about him," went on Nicholas smiling
thoughtfully, "though he never guessed I made any enquiries. That was
later. At the moment Job Grantley's tale was enough for me,--that, and
something else he chanced to say. After he had gone I sat thinking, first
of past days, then of the future. A distant cousin was heir to the
property, a fellow to whom Curtis would have been a man after his own
heart. I'd never had what you might precisely term a feeling of bosom
friendship towards William Gateley. Oddly enough, you came into my mind
at the moment. I remembered the whole scene on the moorland. I could not
get away from the memory. Then the thought flashed into my mind to make
you my heir. It seemed absurd, but it remained a fixture, nevertheless.
The main thoroughly reasonable objection was that I knew exceedingly
little about you. The child is not always father to the man. Fate takes a
hand in the after moulding at times. Yet if it were not you it would be
Gateley. That, at all events, was my decision. Then I conceived the
notion of making you live as one of the labourers on the estate, in short
of giving you some first-hand knowledge of a labourer's method of living,
and incidentally of the tenderness of Curtis. Do you follow me?"

Antony nodded, an odd smile on his lips. He remembered his own
conjecture, suggested by Mr. Albert George's discourse. The education was
absolutely unnecessary.

"I fancied," went on Nicholas, "that it might teach you to be mo