"I don't know much about that. There will never be a 'much better' in my case. The people about me talk with the utmost unconcern of whether I can live one month or possibly two. Anything beyond that is quite out of the question." The squire took a pride in making the worst of his case, so that the people to whom he talked should marvel the more at his vitality. "But we won't mind my health now. It is true, I fear, that you have quarrelled with your uncle." "It is quite true that he has quarrelled with me." "I am afraid that that is more important. He means, if he can, to cut you out of the entail." "He does not mean that I shall have the property if he can prevent it." "I don't think very much of entails myself," said the squire. "If a man has a property he should be able to leave it as he pleases; or--or else he doesn't have it." "That is what the law intends, I suppose," said Harry. "Just so; but the law is such an old woman that she never knows how to express herself to any purpose. I haven't allowed the law to bind me. I dare say you know the story." "About your two sons,--and the property? I think all the world knows the story." "I suppose it has been talked about a little," said the squire, with a chuckle. "My object has been to prevent the law from handing over my property to the fraudulent claims which my son's creditors were enabled to make, and I have succeeded fairly well. On that head I have nothing to regret. Now your uncle is going to take other means." "Yes; he is going to take means which, are, at any rate, lawful." "But which will be tedious, and may not, perhaps, succeed. He is intending to have an heir of his own." "That I believe is his purpose," said Harry. "There is no reason why he shouldn't;--but he mayn't, you know." "He is not married yet." "No;--he is not married yet. And then he has also stopped the allowance he used to make you." Harry nodded assent. "Now, all this is a great shame." "I think so." "The poor gentleman has been awfully bamboozled." "He is not so very old," said Harry, "I don't think he is more than fifty." "But he is an old goose. You'll excuse me, I know. Augustus Scarborough got him up to London, and filled him full of lies." "I am aware of it." "And so am I aware of it. He has told him stories as to your conduct with Mountjoy which, added to some youthful indiscretions of your own--" "It was simply because I didn't like to hear him read sermons."