"You see," he said, "even our own lawyer gives in. He says not a word about opposition. No, there's no help for it; Eagles' Nest must go from you. But I think old Aunt Atkinson ought to have been ashamed of herself." "She must have been dreadfully wicked," sobbed Alice. One thing they did not tell Mrs. Raynor--that she could be made responsible for the money received and spent during the past twelvemonth. The claim was not yet made; would not be made until Mr. George Atkinson's arrival; time enough to tell her then. What their plans were to be, or where they could go, or how live, was the subject of many an anxious thought, as the days passed on. Edina suggested this and that; but poor Mrs. Raynor and Alice shrunk from all. As yet they could not realize what the turning-out of Eagles' Nest would be, and instinctively shunned the anticipation. But upon none did the blow fall so bitterly as upon Charles. He was suddenly flung from his position on the height of a pinnacle to its base. A few days ago he was an independent gentleman, an undergraduate of Oxford, the heir to Eagles' Nest; now all these desirable accessories had melted like icicles in the sunbeams. He must work for a living, if he were to live; he must take his name off the college books, failing the means to return to college; he must, for his mind's best peace, forget that there was such a place as Eagles' Nest. Work for a living! How was he to do anything of the kind, he asked himself. And even if he were willing, and the work presented itself (some charming, rose-coloured vision of a sinecure post would now and again arise indistinctly before his imagination) how would he be free to fulfil it, with those wretched debts at his heels? One little matter did surprise Charles--he heard nothing of Huddles. He had fully expected that within a day or two of that worthy man's departure certain sharks of the law, or--as he seemed to prefer to call them--tigers, would attack him. But nothing of the sort occurred. The days went on, and Charles was still not interfered with.