The Squire¹ was almost lost in joy when he received his son's letter, telling him that Ralph the heir had consented to sell everything. The one great wish of his life was to be accomplished² at last! The property was to be his own, so that he might do what he liked with it, so that he might leave it entire to his own son, so that for the remainder of his life he might enjoy it in that community with his son which had always appeared to him to be the very summit of human bliss³. From the sweet things which he had seen he had been hitherto cut off by the record of his own fault, and had spent the greater part of his life in the endurance of a bitter punishment. He had been torn to pieces, too, in contemplating⁴ the modes of escape from the position in which his father's very natural will had placed him. He might of course have married, and at least have expected and have hoped for children. But in that there would have been misery⁵. His son was the one human being that was dear to him above all others, and by such a marriage he would have ruined his son. Early in life, comparatively early, he had made up his mind that he would not do that;—that he would save his money, and make a property for the boy he loved. But then it had come home to him as a fact, that he could be happy in preparing no other home for his son than this old family house of his, with all its acres, woods, and homesteads. The acres, woods, and homesteads gave to him no delight, feeling as he did every hour of his life that they were not his own for purposes of a real usufruct. Then by degrees he had heard of his nephew's follies⁶, and the idea had come upon him that he might buy his nephew out. Ralph, his own Ralph, had told him that the idea was cruel; but he could not see the cruelty. "What a bad man loses a good man will get," he said; "and surely it must be better for all those who are to live by the property that a good man should be the master of it." He would not interfere⁷, nor would he have any power of

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