Upon my father's death, my mother, who was at that time not much over twenty years of age, married again with one George Beakbane, a wealthy farmer and owner of a comfortable freehold estate in Norfolk. This property had for its title the family name of Beakbane. My step-father, after one son was born to him, lost his young wife, and was left with two infants upon his hands. Right well he treated both, making no sort of distinction, but sharing his love between us, and, after we were of an age to benefit from a man's training, bringing us up under his own eye and in his own school. It was a Spartan entry upon life for young Joshua Beakbane and myself; but whereas I thrived under the puritanic and colourless regime, Mr. Beakbane's own son, a youth by nature prone to vicious habits and evil communications, chafed beneath the iron rule, which only became more unbending in consequence. There was much to be said on either side, no doubt; though none could have foreseen, as a result of those trifling restraints and paternal rebukes, the great and terrible punishment that would fall both upon father and son. When he was twenty-one years of age, Joshua Beakbane, in a fit of mad folly, that to me is scarcely conceivable, ran away from the Farm, taking with him about five hundred pounds of his father's money. He was pursued, arrested, and committed for trial at the next assizes. Old George Beakbane, a just, proud man, sprung from a race that had ever been just and proud, would listen to no plea of mercy. There was none to speak for the culprit but me--his half-brother; and my prayers were useless. The father sent his son to gaol, blotted his name from the family tree, and, after that day, regarded me as his heir. That I should change my name to Beakbane was a stipulation of my step-father, and this I had no objection to doing. My inclinations and ambitions were towards art, but such prospects as a painter's life could promise were distasteful to George Beakbane, and I relinquished them. Joshua's sentence amounted to ten years of penal servitude, and it was the wish of my life at that time to some day bring about a reconciliation between father and son. Any of the great advantages accruing to myself through the present arrangements I would have gladly foregone to see the old man happy; for him I loved sincerely, and clearly saw, as the time went by, that all joy had faded out of his life after his son went to prison. Long before the ten years were fulfilled, however, George Beakbane died and I succeeded to the estate. And here I solemnly declare and avow, before heaven and men, that my intention from the first moment of accepting the mastership of Beakbane, was, by doing so, to benefit him whom I still considered the rightful owner thereof. Upon Joshua's release I fully purposed an act of abdication in his favour. I should, had all gone well, have taken such legal measures as might be convenient to the case, and reinstated my relative in that situation