The Bank was his passion and his life. When at fifty, to the astonishment of many, he married, the City merely said: "He must have an heir to carry on the Bank." Mrs. Silver was a semi-aristocratic woman of limited intelligence, suppressed ambition, and sound limbs. It was the latter characteristic which won her a husband. He was not such a bad judge of make and shape as his father would have had the world believe; and as usual Brazil Silver's judgment proved good. In the appointed time his wife fulfilled her function, and gave him the son he asked of her. CHAPTER XII The Eton Man Jim Silver grew up neither his father's son nor his mother's. "He's a throw-back--to his grandfather," said old Sir Evelyn. And in fact from the first the lad's soul hankered after the broad lands of Leicestershire rather than the counting-house in Threadneedle Street. His happiest days were spent as a child on his grand-dad's farm, amid the great horses, and sweet-breathed kine, and golden stacks. "Back to the land," as his grandfather was fond of saying, was the child's unspoken motto. The old man and his sturdy grandchild were rare intimates, and never so happy as when wandering together about the yards and farm-buildings and pastures, the child, silent and absorbed, as he clutched his grand-dad's big brown finger. The pair did not talk much: they were too content. But there was one often-repeated conversation which took place between them as they strolled. "What goin' to be when you grows up, Jim?" "Farmer." "What shall ye breed?" "Shire-'osses." The child came back always from those prolonged visits with the sun on his cheeks, the strength in his limbs, and Leicestershire broad upon his tongue; and he never understood why his mother cut his visits short on every imaginable pretext. At Eton the lad's friends were almost all drawn from the families in whose blood, after generations of possession, the land and its belongings had become a real if somewhat perverted passion. They would sit on into the twilight in each other's studies and ramble on interminably and with the exaggerated wisdom of seventeen about the subject nearest to their youthful hearts. Sometimes Mr. Bromhead would look in, grim and gray behind his spectacles. "Talking horses as usual, Jim, I suppose," he would say. "And dog, sir," corrected young Amersham. "With an occasional shorthorn chucked in to tip the scale," added old Sir Evelyn's fair grandson. * * * * * When Brazil Silver died, the year his son was the heavy-weight in the Oxford boat, he left a will which was in accordance with his life. Every penny he had--and he had a good many, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer remarked in the House of Commons--was tied up in the Bank, and to remain there. It was all left to his son. "I can trust him to see to his mother," ran the will, written on half a sheet of paper, "and to any dependents. Charities I loathe."