"What I saw here shocked me. I could not detect one redeeming point in the conduct of Major Raynor and his family, though I assure you I should have been glad to do so. To leave the estate in their hands would be little less than a sin, as I looked upon it, and a cruel wrong upon the poor people who lived on it. So I deliberated on my measures, and finally took them. Edwin Street announced my speedy return, and conveyed a letter from me (apparently written in Australia) to Callard and Prestleigh, informing them that they held the will, and ordering them to produce it, that it might be proved and acted upon. I was more than justified in what I did, as I thought then," emphatically concluded Mr. Atkinson, "and as I think now." "Well--yes, I cannot say you were not," acquiesced Edina. "But it seemed to us so bitterly hard--never to inquire what became of the Raynors; never to offer them any help." "Stay," said he. "I did inquire. I heard that Miss Edina Raynor had come forward from Trennach with her help, and had established Mrs. Raynor in a school in which she was likely to do well. I heard that Charles Raynor was about to be taken by the hand by an old friend of his father's, one Colonel Cockburn, who meant to put him forward in the world. In short, I left England again in the belief that the Raynors were, in a smaller way, as prosperous as they had been at Eagles' Nest." "What misapprehensions exist!" exclaimed Edina. "That home was soon lost again through a fire, and Colonel Cockburn only saw Charles to tell him he could not help him. Their life for the last three years has been one long course of humiliation, poverty and privation." "Ay! and you have voluntarily shared it with them," he answered, looking straight into her eyes. "Well, they needed the lesson. But I would have been a friend to Charles Raynor had he allowed me, and not shown himself so haughtily upstart; and to his cousin the doctor also. When Charles was in a mess at Eagles' Nest, in danger of being arrested for debt, I asked him to confide his trouble to me and let me help him. Not a bit of it. He flung my words back in my face with as much scorn as if I had been a dog. So I let him go his own way: though I privately settled the debt for him. Had he known who I was, and that I had power to eject him and his family from their heritage, I could have understood his behaviour: but that was impossible, and I think I never met with so bad an example of conduct shown to a stranger. Yes: Charles Raynor needed a lesson read to him, and he has had it." "Indeed he has. They all have. Charles Raynor is as true and good a young man now as he was once thoughtless and self-sufficient. There will be no fear of his lapsing in this life." "I saw him a year ago in Preen's office," remarked Mr. Atkinson, "and liked his tones. Preen gives me an excellent account of him and his sister."