This was all Lewis had in the world out of old Sir Patrick's favour, but that favour was bestowed upon him all the more liberally that he had nobody, just as the old man declared _he_ had nobody, to care for him. "We'll stand by each other," Sir Patrick said. And no doubt there is a standing ground upon which old age and youth can meet which is wanting when one of the two involved is an old man and the other a middle-aged one. Sir Patrick scarcely remembered his son, who had been away from him by far the greater part of his life, and had shown very clearly, when they met, that a man of fifty is on too great an equality with another man of seventy-five to leave much room for filial feeling. The general thought his father (frankly) an old bore, and could not forgive him for that ridiculous palace, the new Murkley, which Sir Patrick had built in his youth. But to Lewis Grantley his noble patron was no old bore, but the most gracious of gentlemen and the kindest of fathers. The lad looked up to him with a kind of adoration. What did he know about the Scotch relations? and, if he had known, he would not have cared. It seemed natural to him that a man should know nothing about his relations. It was his own case. They travelled about everywhere, the old man and the young one, the tie between them growing closer every day. When Sir Patrick got too weak to travel, Lewis nursed and served him like the most devoted of sons. It was only when a letter came with prodigious black borders, about a year before Sir Patrick's death, announcing that of General Murray, that the young fellow became aware that his old friend had a son. But except that a dinner-party was put off, and a hatband put on, no other notice was taken of the loss, and it faded out of the favourite's mind as a matter of no importance either to himself or any one else. When Sir Patrick died, Lewis mourned as sincerely as ever child mourned a parent, and was as much startled to find himself the master of a large fortune, left to him by this second father, as if he had been seventeen instead of twenty-five; for all this time, eight long years, had passed since his adoption by the kind old man to whose service he had devoted himself with an _insouciance_ more characteristic of the country of his birth than of the race to which he belonged.