"The old hypocrite!" thought Ben, "he's rolling in money, besides this new windfall. Well, sir," he said aloud, "I shall write----" "Who's this?" interrupted the squire, who did not see so well as he once did. It was the postman. Letters were not frequent at the squire's, as they are at many houses. The man was coming up the avenue, in the distance as yet. Squire Carr walked towards him and stretched out his hand for the letters. The postman gave him two. One was a large, blue, formidable-looking packet, addressed to himself; the other was a perfumed, mignonne, three-cornered sort of missive, for Benjamin Carr, Esq. "Here, Ben, I don't know who your correspondent may be," said the squire, tossing him the note. "She's an idiot, that's certain; nobody, above one, would think of sending a doll's thing like that through the post. It's a wonder it wasn't lost." Benjamin Carr glanced at the handwriting and slipped the note into the pocket of his shooting coat. Sauntering to a little distance, while the squire was busy with his own letter, he there took it out, opened, and began to read it: a closely-written epistle, on thin foreign paper. He was startled by something very like the bellow of a bull. Turning round, he saw the squire in a fine commotion, and the noise had come from him. "Why, what is the matter?" exclaimed Ben, advancing. "Matter!" ejaculated Squire Carr--"_matter!_ They are mad; or else I am dreaming." He held the formidable document before his eyes. He turned it, he gazed at it, he shook it, he pinched himself to see whether he _was_ dreaming. If any man ever believed that his eyes played him false, Squire Carr believed his did then. "What is it?" repeated the astonished Ben. It was a notice from Mr. Fauntleroy that an action was entered upon--to eject him from the possession of that bijou of a house; to wrest from him the fortune; to give Marmaduke's money to Robert Carr; to forbid him to touch or remove so much (his own words just before to his son) as a plated spoon of the effects; to reduce him, in short, to a poor wretched non-inheriting beggar again. Not that all this, or the half of it, was stated; it was implied, and that was enough for the squire's vivid imagination. "Ben, my boy, what does it mean?" he gasped. "I'm sure I don't know," said Ben, considerably crestfallen. "I'm not dreaming, am I?" asked the squire. "Mercy be good to us! What can they have found? Perhaps old Marmaduke made a will after all! They'd never enter an action without being justified. Get the horse into the dog-cart and drive me to the station, Ben. I must go over to see Fauntleroy. Hang him! the sly old villain! I should like to twist his neck." "But you will promise me the hundred pounds, father?" "Hundred pounds be shot!" shrieked the squire in a fury. "I've just got notice that I'm ruined, and he asks me for a hundred pounds! No, sir! nor a hundred pence. How can I afford money, now this inheritance is threatened?"