The eldest of the three brothers was the last to marry: Captain Raynor. He and his young wife led rather a scrambling sort of life for some years afterwards, always puzzled how to make both ends of their straitened income meet; and then a slice of good fortune (as the captain regarded it) befell him. Some distant relative left him an annuity of five hundred a-year. Five hundred a-year in addition to his pay seemed riches to the captain: whilst his unsophisticated and not too-well-managing wife thought they were now clear of shoals for life. Very closely upon this, the captain obtained his majority. This was succeeded by a long and severe attack of illness; and the major, too hastily deciding that he should never be again fit for active service, sold out. He and his wife settled down in a pretty cottage-villa, called Spring Lawn, in the neighbourhood of Bath, living there and bringing up their children in much the same scrambling fashion that they had previously lived. No order, no method; all good-hearted carelessness, good-natured improvidence. Just as it had been in their earlier days, so it was now: they never knew where to look for a shilling of ready-money. That it would be so all through life with Major Raynor, whatever might be the amount of his income, was pretty certain: he was sanguine, off-hand, naturally improvident. The proceeds from the sale of his commission had all vanished, chiefly in paying back-debts; the five hundred a-year was all they had to live upon, and that five hundred would die with the major: and, in short, they seemed to be worse off now than before the annuity came to them. Considering that they spent considerably more than the five hundred yearly, and yet had no comfort to show for it, and that debts had gathered again over the major's head, it was not to be wondered at that they were not well off. The major never gave a thought to consequences; debt sat as lightly upon him as though it had been a wreath of laurel. If he did feel slightly worried at times, what mattered it: he should, sooner or later, come into Eagles' Nest, when all things would be smooth as glass. A more prudent man than the major might have seen cause to doubt the absolute certainty of the estate coming to him. _He_ did not; he looked upon the inheritance of it as an accomplished fact.